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News: Do you SOFOBOMO?

E

Edward Bussa

Member
I was surprised to find zero discussion here about the SOFOBOMo_Org website. Its a funny acronym that stands for Solo Photo Book Month. You attempt to shoot, edit and compile photographs into e-book form in 30 days.

I participated this year and my finished product can be found here:

http://sofobomo.org/2009/books/ebussa/cherry-side/

I assume there will be one next year - now's a good time to start planning. If you download the book, let me know your thoughts!
 
Asher Kelman

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
So outstanding an exmplary, Ed!

This is such a departure from your fish!

I invite you to post 1-4 related pictures at a time, slowly, so we can comment on them. These are a most enjoyable collection I commend to everyone to look at.

Asher
 
M

Mike Shimwell

New member
Hi Edward

Yes I have - I've shot and (almost) selected 35 images - I did it together with my 7 year old daughter. Work and my wife's study have been a bit frenetic, but i need to get it put into a pdf pretty sharpish to meet the 1 month deadline!

Sadly it's not in your league - I really like your book after lokking through it - my topic is 'This Small Space' and refers to our back yard that is big enough to park two cars. The idea came from a shot of Sue I made a few months back that really reminds of how much I enjoy being here with my family. Unlike most SoFoBoMo efforts, that seem to involve people spending days or weeks shooting and processing, ours involved 2 hours shooting over two days and one evenings processing so far. PDF generation may turn out to take a lot longer, based on everyone else's experience - which would be a shame, but there you go.

I'll let you know when I get it posted, if only to say that I did it!!

Mike
 
E

Edward Bussa

Member
I will take you up on your suggestion Asher and thanks for your encouragement.

I think I'd rather start a new thread titled Cherryside in RiskIt! perhaps?
 
E

Edward Bussa

Member
Mike,

Yes, I guess I did know you were participating. I had seen a few posts on your blog about it. I admire your courage to constrain your imaging area so drastically - creative.

The PDF thing is an issue - not sure what the solution is. In my book, each page has different dimensions. PDF actually works well for that. For the merging, I used a free tool called PdfMerge.

The pain was saving each photoshop layout as a pdf (35 times, click save, click dropdown, click OK). I'm sure I should've recorded an action but my confidence level with that is lowish, so I persisted through the drudgery.

Bon Courage Mike!
 
M

Mike Shimwell

New member
Hi Edward,

The book is now up - I finished, or more accuraetly we finished as my daughter joined in with me. I should admit that the creative limitation was a result of time rather than choice, but I think it was actually good for me - it forced me out and to make some pictures at a time when I was feeling that wirk pressure had knocked the creative juices out of me.

Anyway, the book can be found here. Comments welcome.

Mike
 
Asher Kelman

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Mike,

Please, please post some of the pictures gradually so we can enjoy and discuss them here. I love the way you have looked at what was around your small space and found such a lot of fascinating things to photograph and you have done so beautifully.

Give Hannah a hug for her efforts! Made my day!

Asher
 
J

Jamie Lawrence

New member
Edward Bussa said:
I was surprised to find zero discussion here about the SOFOBOMo_Org website. Its a funny acronym that stands for Solo Photo Book Month. You attempt to shoot, edit and compile photographs into e-book form in 30 days.

I participated this year and my finished product can be found here:

http://sofobomo.org/2009/books/ebussa/cherry-side/

I assume there will be one next year - now's a good time to start planning. If you download the book, let me know your thoughts!
Click to expand...

Ed, that's a wonderful book... it gives a real sense of the place and time of year.

I found the whole SoFoBoMo idea really great and hugely useful. I'd encourage every enthusiastic photographer to give it a go next year. I'm a big fan of setting yourself little projects like SoFoBoMo or a daily photoblog as a means of motivating yourself and providing a focus to your photography. Producing the PDF design is a bit of a pain, particularly if you want to get it printed too. I ended up using the open source DTP tool Scribus for the design/layout/PDF although I'm still hesitating about getting it printed though.

Anyway my SoFoBoMo book, "A Mile of Coastline", is here: http://www.sofobomo.org/2009/books/hopeless/a-mile-of-coastline/.
 
K

Ken Tanaka

pro member
Edward Bussa said:
I was surprised to find zero discussion here about the SOFOBOMo_Org website. Its a funny acronym that stands for Solo Photo Book Month. You attempt to shoot, edit and compile photographs into e-book form in 30 days.

I participated this year and my finished product can be found here:

http://sofobomo.org/2009/books/ebussa/cherry-side/

I assume there will be one next year - now's a good time to start planning. If you download the book, let me know your thoughts!
Click to expand...

Very nice work, Ed. Having visited that area with some frequency 20 years ago I can say that your images put me right back there. Nice composition choices.

The only criticism I have is with regard to your captions and technical post-processing annotations on each image. It greatly detracts from the overall presentation, giving it a strongly amateur enthusiast / camera club feeling. Your images can stand on their own with no captions whatsoever. Who cares what computer dink you used or whether an image shows early harvested goat poop or first light moldy wood?!! (My "favorite" caption: "Orchard, Van, Yellow Kayak"...duh !!)

Just let your beautiful images represent themselves! Add an introductory piece to the beginning of the book, or use an index with descriptive information for each image if you really feel it necessary.
 
E

Edward Bussa

Member
Ken, I'm glad you managed to get past my simple captions and enjoy the book anyway. I remember chuckling to myself when typing "orchard, van, yellow kayak" so I suppose it was my "favorite" too.

Thanks for the encouragement and the tips.

All the best!
 
E

Edward Bussa

Member
James, I like your cover shot. Well done.

I think your composition on pg. 30 (White Water) is very good too.

I downloaded Scribus as well but decided I didn't want to spend the time learning a new program.
 
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