It is tough to top the outstanding photos being posted here by all of the new folks in town - a wide welcome and thanks for sharing your terrific work with us - look forward to a lot more in the years to come!
One of the goals of most nature photographers is to see a collection of your work published in a coffee table book. Very few folks ever realize this dream, although it is getting much easier these days with the online publishers that allow you to create a complete book on your home computer and get just a single book printed at a reasonable price instead of having to go through a publisher and get a $50,000 commitment. I'm in the middle of doing the latter for my eighth picture book and wanted to share a point in the process with everyone.
While finding and dealing with a publisher is perhaps the most difficult part, my job was made a little easier since I have compromising photos of my publisher and she would be afraid I would publish them if she did not publish my books! Anyway, the first step of the publishing process (once you have all the photos created and the publisher deal all lined up), is to select which photos will be going in the book. If you are working through a normal publisher the job is a bit easier since you would just send them a large number of images and they would take it from there - picking the final photos for the book, then doing all of the design and layout from start to finish. In my case, I do everything from start to finish, so the job takes a little more time.
It has taken me about two weeks to go through 30 years worth of photos to select the finals for my new book project - even though most of the photos I wanted to put in the book would be brand new and have never been published before I wanted to go back and find a handful of classics to include in the book as well (like my first image to be published by National Geographic). After many revisions to the pile, I narrowed the selections down to about 150 shots, knowing I would eventually have to cut that down even further to just over 100 that would actually make it into the book. This entire process was done using Bridge in CS3, which made everything very easy (it helps to have a 30" monitor, which allows me to see a couple hundred images on the screen at the same time that are large enough to make decisions by).
Once I had a folder of 150 selects the next step was to go through and select ones that might work as two-page spreads (there would be 11 in the book), plus select a batch of photos that I wanted to stand alone (there would be a dozen or more of those in the book). And then we went through and selected "pairs" of photos that would go well with each other on facing pages (the publisher helped me with that, while she was sitting on my lap!). I don't like to cram as many photos on a page as you can get, but rather will never have more than a single photo on a page, and always like to design the book two pages at a time since this is the way you always view any book - looking at facing pages.
The final photo selection step took me an entire day - this is when you not only pick your favorite children to show to the world, but you figure out exactly where they are going to go in the book, their size, etc. This is the part that I really love, and to me is the most artistic part of the entire process - designing the flow of the book from page one to the last page. And by the way, that is exactly how I proceed - I pick the first and the last pages first! Then it is a matter of working in two programs at the same time - one is the actual page design program (Adobe InDesign) where I place the photos and text and is what will eventually be sent to the printers in China; and the second is Photoshop Bridge, where I have all of the potential photos illustrated. I select a pair of photos, then drop them onto the other program, then resize and place until I am happy. It was almost midnight when I completed this task. I ended up with just over 100 photos, which means nearly 50 of my kids had to be dumped!
Now the real work comes in - the photos I placed in the book document were just jpgs, often nothing more than RAW files opened and converted to jpgs with no processing done to them at all. So now I have to go through and find each of the original RAW files, then process and size for the final output. Then I have the little task of WRITING the entire book, but that is another story. The point of all this was to show you my final selections, in the order they will be in the book - not the actual layout of the book, but rather a snapshot of my computer screen in Bridge with all 104 of the photo thumbnails. I have reduced the size so it might fit on your monitor, although you will probably have to scroll around a little bit. I've got another two weeks of work to do before the project is sent to China, and the finished product should be ready for sale in October...
NEW PICTURE BOOK PHOTOS. Keep in mind these are UNprocessed jpgs so the final image in the book will most likely look a little bit different. By the way - can you tell what the subject of the new book is?
Posted by Wayne Rhodus on June 21, 2007 at 9:17 AM
Quite a deal Tim, thanks for sharing the step-by-step process. I'm looking forward to seeing it.
Thanks for sharing your process Tim. I looked at the gallery of images for the book and a always they are great. Looking forward to getting a copy when the book is published. Thanks again for sharing!
Posted by Tim Buchanan on June 21, 2007 at 9:31 AM
Quite a display of beautiful falls, Tim - I look forward to seeing the book!
Tim, I continue to be amazed at your ability to capture so many wonderful scenes in nature. And these are just the waterfalls! Thanks for the scoop on publishing. Maybe one of these days...if I could just find a publisher in a compromising pose
Hi Tim
This is exactly why I am so glad I found this forum. It is so cool that you share information like this and I get a chance to learn from your experience. As always beautiful images and respected fan of your work.
Gale Rainwater
Tim, can't wait to see you new book. Your shots are amazing. I was in the Art of Framing today and saw a couple of these shots that Lewis had framed. If anyone is near downtown Fort Smith, stop by and check out Tim's prints and the framing Lewis has done.
Discussion
8 repliesOne of the goals of most nature photographers is to see a collection of your work published in a coffee table book. Very few folks ever realize this dream, although it is getting much easier these days with the online publishers that allow you to create a complete book on your home computer and get just a single book printed at a reasonable price instead of having to go through a publisher and get a $50,000 commitment. I'm in the middle of doing the latter for my eighth picture book and wanted to share a point in the process with everyone.
While finding and dealing with a publisher is perhaps the most difficult part, my job was made a little easier since I have compromising photos of my publisher and she would be afraid I would publish them if she did not publish my books! Anyway, the first step of the publishing process (once you have all the photos created and the publisher deal all lined up), is to select which photos will be going in the book. If you are working through a normal publisher the job is a bit easier since you would just send them a large number of images and they would take it from there - picking the final photos for the book, then doing all of the design and layout from start to finish. In my case, I do everything from start to finish, so the job takes a little more time.
It has taken me about two weeks to go through 30 years worth of photos to select the finals for my new book project - even though most of the photos I wanted to put in the book would be brand new and have never been published before I wanted to go back and find a handful of classics to include in the book as well (like my first image to be published by National Geographic). After many revisions to the pile, I narrowed the selections down to about 150 shots, knowing I would eventually have to cut that down even further to just over 100 that would actually make it into the book. This entire process was done using Bridge in CS3, which made everything very easy (it helps to have a 30" monitor, which allows me to see a couple hundred images on the screen at the same time that are large enough to make decisions by).
Once I had a folder of 150 selects the next step was to go through and select ones that might work as two-page spreads (there would be 11 in the book), plus select a batch of photos that I wanted to stand alone (there would be a dozen or more of those in the book). And then we went through and selected "pairs" of photos that would go well with each other on facing pages (the publisher helped me with that, while she was sitting on my lap!). I don't like to cram as many photos on a page as you can get, but rather will never have more than a single photo on a page, and always like to design the book two pages at a time since this is the way you always view any book - looking at facing pages.
The final photo selection step took me an entire day - this is when you not only pick your favorite children to show to the world, but you figure out exactly where they are going to go in the book, their size, etc. This is the part that I really love, and to me is the most artistic part of the entire process - designing the flow of the book from page one to the last page. And by the way, that is exactly how I proceed - I pick the first and the last pages first! Then it is a matter of working in two programs at the same time - one is the actual page design program (Adobe InDesign) where I place the photos and text and is what will eventually be sent to the printers in China; and the second is Photoshop Bridge, where I have all of the potential photos illustrated. I select a pair of photos, then drop them onto the other program, then resize and place until I am happy. It was almost midnight when I completed this task. I ended up with just over 100 photos, which means nearly 50 of my kids had to be dumped!
Now the real work comes in - the photos I placed in the book document were just jpgs, often nothing more than RAW files opened and converted to jpgs with no processing done to them at all. So now I have to go through and find each of the original RAW files, then process and size for the final output. Then I have the little task of WRITING the entire book, but that is another story. The point of all this was to show you my final selections, in the order they will be in the book - not the actual layout of the book, but rather a snapshot of my computer screen in Bridge with all 104 of the photo thumbnails. I have reduced the size so it might fit on your monitor, although you will probably have to scroll around a little bit. I've got another two weeks of work to do before the project is sent to China, and the finished product should be ready for sale in October...
NEW PICTURE BOOK PHOTOS. Keep in mind these are UNprocessed jpgs so the final image in the book will most likely look a little bit different. By the way - can you tell what the subject of the new book is?
This is exactly why I am so glad I found this forum. It is so cool that you share information like this and I get a chance to learn from your experience. As always beautiful images and respected fan of your work.
Gale Rainwater
Dick Lee