square format

Nov

2011

eBook: Square by Andrew S. Gibson

As my regular followers here know I often write reviews of ebooks released through the good folks at Craft & Vision. I just love ebooks! I know that is obvious. But there is something wonderful about paying $4 or $5 for a 40 to 60 to-occasionally-80 page manuscript of luscious photography writing. The advent of tablet devices like the iPad have made ebooks an economical means of distributing and consuming content, and these ebooks look wonderful!

So I was both humbled and excited when one of my favorite Craft & Vision authors contacted me and asked me to review his latest ebook: Square: the digital photographer’s guide to the square format. If you remember, Andrew is the author of the ebook on composition that was released last week as well as two of my favorite titles “The Magic of Black and White, Volumes 1 & 2”. Andrew has decided to release this ebook through his website.

Square explores the history of the square format, its challenges for digital photographers whose cameras photograph strictly in 35mm 3×2 format, and the possibilities this format encourages in composition. In addition, Andrew packs this ebook with beautiful new images all formatted square, two case studies with wonderful square format film photographers, and several tutorials for altering digital files into attractive square format photographs.

And to celebrated the launch of his book, Andrew is having a special sale for the first 7 days. Normally $5US, you can get the book for $4US by using the coupon code square20 at checkout.

This code expires on Wednesday 30th November, 2011 23:59 GMT.

Aug

2011

El Bautismo: a book preview

Last month I had the privilege of photographing a family friend baptize their daughter. I’d never photographed such an event and it was wonderful to be trusted with documenting this special event. In addition to providing my friend and client with the images of the ceremony and following celebration I thought I might surprise them with a little book.

I made this book using Blurb’s Lightroom to Bookify plugin and I found the process smooth and intuitively easy. I usually make books by using Blurb’s downloadable BookSmart software that allows me to build and edit the entire book on my computer before uploading all the images during the “publish” phase of the process. Blurb’s Bookify option allows the author to upload all the images to Blurb and build the book online. There are advantages and drawbacks to each option. The Lightroom Plugin allows the author to upload the images, choose the book size and style, and choose the cover images directly in Lightroom. The advantage here is that I didn’t have to export the images to my hard disk before uploading them to Blurb; everything was handled from within Lightroom on the front end and then the fine tuning edit happened on Blurb’s website.

What I really enjoyed about the process is that the 7×7 format of the small square book format forced me to consider cropping the images in a square format and I really liked how they looked.

So above is the preview of the entire book and I hope it gives you a feel for the event and the celebration. I would love to hear what you think