Conclusion

Upon completion of this project I have researched number of photographers, discovered new to me areas of documentary photography, gained the necessary experience and skills (photo editing, book designing and publishing, etc.), as well as improved my understanding of the media.

My overall impression of the outcomes of the project is satisfying: the research gave me a lot of new information about the industry and particularly self-publishing side of photography; with book printing I had an opportunity to improve my editing and printing skills; the creation of the final product (Soul of the Dark River Artist’s book) and exploration of the ways to do it, opened for me the new possibilities of presentation work in different way.

Publication (Artist Book/Zine) is complete

To produce the quality publication I had follow all the steps from research, and taking and editing images to using the high quality art paper and ink.

The initial idea of the book type and format derived from my will to produce some quality imagery for people to look at while the project as a whole was still in progress. While researching what other more or less established photographers produced throughout their careers, I was struck with beauty and rawness at the same time of photographer’s artist books and dummies (usually they have to be produced by photographer, and they often have very small number of copies. They are made in order to be submitted to the bigger publishers for higher number of editions).

For this assignment I have used Medium format camera with the negatives digitalised using Imacon Flextight x1 scanner, which is of great quality.

My choice of paper was Innova Natural Wight Lightly textured DUO 200GSM art paper, where DUO means that the images could be printed on both sides.

The actual book was designed in InDesign, using college computer and printed at home due to the college printers currently being out of order for last 2-3 weeks. As I printed photographs at home using consumer (rather that professional one at college) quality printer, which doesn’t have ability to setup paper profile for the paper I was using, the images came out slightly off true colours. However, the publication looks like it was professionally produced.

For binding I have used heavy duty stapler. Initially my idea was to stitch the pages together, using high quality thread and needle. But I have changed my mind about the way how fix pages together, because using stitching it would give effect of fine art body of work, where I wanted to produce something really simple and very raw, thereby underlying that the project is still in progress.

Scans of self-published “Soul of the Dark River” book:

Making my own book - research

After more than a month of research I've made my choice of the book to be published.
It's definitely will be self-published book (more like a zine type or artist book publication). The book will have 11 images and will be of A5 paper size (actually the A4 paper folded in two and stapled in the middle).
In previous posts I mentioned the paper I'm going to use in book production.
Also, I would like to place here some images of other artist's books, that inspired me in great way.

So, tomorrow I'll make some efforts to produce few copies of the book and in the next post that probably going to be tomorrow as well, I'll describe whole process of book printing in details.

Final Poster

As our project comes to the end, I'm going to post here my final poster for the exhibition.

Researching the photo paper for the book

In order to successfully complete this module I had to research the paper (photo, art, etc) market including manufactures, dealers, distributors...

I read hundreds reviews of the art paper (as I’m going to use art paper for my book) and I’ve chosen Innova brand Natural White Lightly Textured Duo 200gsm paper for my inside pages and for cover I’ve chosen  Fotospeed Natural Lightly Textured 315gsm (heavyweight for longer durability) paper.

During my research I’ve used various sources. So, I’m going to share the links to the useful websites for those, who is interested in reading about types of paper, etc.

http://www.fineartfoto.co.uk/

http://www.on-linepaper.co.uk/

http://www.innovaart.com/en/book-art.html

I will post few more links in the next posts. Meanwhile you can look at Andy Clift’s web blog here. He is very good expert at making books.

Contact Sheets

I had many thoughts about the official name for the project (and the book) and decided to name it “Soul of the dark river”. Where the “dark” in this context stands for the very old name of the river:

1)      Thames takes its name from the Celtic word tamesa, meaning ‘the dark one’, as well as from the Sanskrit Tamas meaning “dark”  referring to the colour of the water, as its waters are often dark and cloudy.

And, also I’m trying to depict the body of water in very mysterious, dark kind of way.

Anyway, in this post I’m going to publish my contact sheets for the period covering three month, all the way from the beginning of this assignment.

Also, have a look at this photographer's page. It's really amazing and can influence anyone.