To those waiting for their books of Balcombe Heights I ask you to please bare with me, my printer is not enjoying this paper.

Printing the SoFoBoMo book has been an interesting learning curve. My thought was that double sided paper would be a problem in regards to orientation and also having facing pages correctly numbers may be troublesome. Seems these were the easy hurdles to get over.
There is more time spent in feeding a printer which does not like to pick new sheets correctly than in shooting the project, editing, laying out a sequence and writing text.
No wonder so many other people have gone down the path of POD (Publish On Demand).

The paper chosen for printing is Ilford Gallerie Smooth Heavyweight Matte Paper, quite a mouth full. At 200gsm it is also quite heavy for bookpaper and has been a challenge to fold and trim with the guillotine. The guillotine is rated for 25 sheets of 80gsm which is equivalent to 10 sheets of 200gsm but I still feel it will not live long at this load.

Cricket season ended over here for juniors a few weeks ago, a welcome break for all the parents that give so much time each week.

Soccer season is here, to bad if you thought you could rest. Why are so many parents slaves to the weekend sport grind?

I am not sure how this works but after my little whinge below about not getting my printer yet I get a call from Epson saying my printer will be out within 2 weeks.
There are some strange connections out there, or just a plain old coincidence.

It has been almost a month since I posted here that I had won a printer.
I am very grateful that my picture was chosen, even more grateful if the printer I have won had arrived yet. No such luck. Considering that the magazine layout had been done probably several weeks before I received my copy and the winner had been chosen a lot earlier than that I'm perplexed as to what can possibly take so long. I jokingly tell people I will get it when it is superceded by another printer and they need to get rid of old stock of the model I won.
Last month Australian Photography contacted me about another picture I had submitted and was possibly going to be printed in the July edition, that is 2 months before release of that edition. So it is possible that up to 2 months in advance of receiving the magazine they know who wins what, so why the delay?
Instead of asking you maybe I should ask them.

Four whole copies of the SoFoBoMo have now been printed, one copy for my wife, two have left for the US and one sits in my camera bag for those occassions when people would like to see what I do.
More paper has been (back) ordered along with inks for printing. Another 14 copies are to be printed of which half are for family and friends and the rest out to local organisations that have an association of some sort with Balcombe Heights.
Many of the books done for SoFoBoMo have been on POD (publish on demand) websites with the possibility that these books can be purchased by anyone. After reading David Beckerman's posts on his POD trials and tribulations and then Paul's I thought I'd home brew my books. A decision I am glad I made.
Creating the books, creating anything really, comes as a joy to me, something I have been doing ever since I can remember. I am lucky enough that I create things for a living, granted creating electronic gadgets is not usually considered artistic but it feels pretty close to me.
Is anyone else printing their own books? Is anyone having their POD books printed?

The last few days of putting this sofobomo book together has been hectic but it is nice to have completed the project within the 31 days.

Click on this link Balcombe Heights to download the pdf version. You can also see the gallery of pictures without the small amount of text here.

Rushing along now trying to get my pictures together before the Friday 16th deadline for my SoFoBoMo. There have been 27 across the finish line already with some wonderful work done, the question is how many of those that signed up will post on www.sofobomo.org ?
The big question for me is will I actually finish since no layout work has been done yet. Here is a quick gallery of pictures that made my SoFoBoMo.

While I enjoy Marian Drew's short series of Pond Life pictures I do find the Australiana still life series a little disturbing. Maybe still life is not quite the correct term for what is shown.

There is less than 2 weeks left on my SoFoBoMo project and the editing has begun. My lesson today, there have not been enough pictures shot. Over almost 3 weeks only 4 hours of shooting (on this project) and 214 pictures made of which 16 are accceptable.

So many more pictures to be taken and my next available morning is 3 days away.

Editing the pictures I have taken for my sofobomo project is going to be difficult, I'm not sure I will have a set that feel like they are cohesive.

Several of the early starters have completed their projects and they can be seen on the official www.sofobomo.org website here.

Splitting up the book into themes can make the editing more simple as a whole body of work no longer has to represent one idea but it can have several threads, like chapters I guess. Sixteen pictures of people using an area, another sixteen or so of details within the area and a few general views.

To many chapters and this idea falls apart.

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