Welcome to July, I can hardly believe the year’s half gone.
I’ll be wrapping up this Great Smokey Mountain National Park (GSMNP) series of photos this weekend. Perhaps I’ve run it for too long but it’s such a rich environment for a nature photographer — literally, photos around every turn.
I’m considering a photo project that plays to the strengths of my home area…small towns and rural. I’m feeling the urge to move outside nature photos for a while, but I’ll always be a nature photographer at heart. Stepping away and then coming back often gives a fresher view — more thoughts on this later.
Half the allotted time has passed and still no compulsion to complete a SoFoBoMo book for 2010. I don’t think it’s going to happen and that’s okay too.
The photo — winding mountain roads through a deep forest with a river or stream just off one shoulder, rock walls, split rail fences, and scenic pull overs. Some of the positives of a Smokey Mountain visit.
Earl, a number of your Smokey’s images share a very fine reserved palette, certainly extraordinary in our times where the most vivid, sometimes shrieking colors are getting the most attention. I would regard this as foundation to build upon, a distinct signature look that’s certainly worth to be tested in a comprehensive manner.
Markus, I appreciate your insight and I agree this is a ‘look’ I’m interested in pursuing further to see where it leads. It surprises me somewhat I’ve found this reserved palette appealing as I’ve tended to lean toward stronger saturations, but perhaps we can’t see the path before us until we round the corner.
These images are really great, no need to hurry. To change the subject I wonder what you used for layout in last year’s SOFOMOBO project. I want to try and get mine done this year, but after hearing all the stories about the size of the download and needing to be careful to choose the right JPEG compression and such, I thought to ask you whether you had any tips, Mr. Mac-guy (as I am).
Hi Chris, thanks!
I used Adobe InDesign and didn’t experience any major issues with JPEG compression. InDesign has a number of compression options to give a reasonable quality and size final document — it is a bit of an experiment. I believe Paul Lester used the free, open source software, Scribus (downloadable here for OS X) with good results. It also has many of the same functions as InDesign.
One thing I did with last years project in InDesign was to create all the page/document templates ahead of time. Then it was a simple matter to assemble the book…mostly insert or paste at the crunch time.
Good luck!
Scribus definitely is an apt tool for a SOFOBOMO book. I used it myself (on Linux) last year, without any complaints. The pdf creation options are well thought out, without any hassle I could create a 7 MB pdf of a 40+ images book. For sure worth a try.