New Orleans, Two Days and Three Nights

I met the challenge of Solo Photography Book Month and completed a book in less than 30 days. That 30 days starts with making the images, designing, writing text and putting it all together in a PDF book that can be seen on the net. While we were up north the first of this month we took a two-day and three-night trip to New Orleans so all of the images in the book were shot during that time. I put it together after we returned . I needed at least 35 images for the book but ended up using 58 images in one way or another. I was shocked when I counted them up but they just seemed to go together.

You always learn something new when you work on a project. I had my friend, Frank, take a look at the book while it was still a work in progress and he commented on the blank pages that were in the book. If you pick up any published photography book you will find some blank pages across from title pages, introduction pages, essays and such. They look fine in an actual book but in an e-book, they look, well, they look like a lot of blank white space. I had felt this but in my effort to get the book done I didn't quite know what to do with them. He showed me something he had done in a book using a crest on a blank page. Click! An idea popped into my head. I used a technique that Scott Kelby had written about in his book The Adobe Photoshop CS4 Book for Digital Photographers. It was making a panorama image out of a regular image. Now you see a small panorama image on the pages that would have been blank.

My friend, Dianne, helped me edit the text. Thank goodness she did. I certainly make grammar mistakes and typos, but also having someone else give feedback on the content was very valuable. There was one paragraph that I wasn't happy with but in the push to be done I tried to rewrite it a couple of times. Until she put her finger on what was wrong, I didn't know what to do with it.

If you would like to see my book, New Orleans, Two Days and Three Nights, click here. When the site comes up, it will be easier to view if you click on the icon in the top left for full page view. Hope you enjoy it.

The Process

I've made a lot of progress. Here is one of the pages of the Solo Photograph Book Month. I have until July 3 to finish the book.

I have spent some long 12 hour days at the computer processing images and dropping them into pages and then dropping the pages into Cute PDF Professional where I've arranged and rearranged. I still have to write the text and do quite a bit more tweaking. Some photos will not survive the tweaking and I have to be sure that two-page spreads remain together.

This will be an e-book. I'll enter it on the SoFoBoMo website and also put it on Issuu so anyone who is interested can go take a look.

SoFoBoMo isn't a competition. You don't win a prize. Nothing. Why did I do it? That is a little hard to explain.

Just last night when we were having dinner with friends Cynthia and I talked about our work. We are both retired. Neither of us is out beating the bushes to find recognition or reward for what we are doing but we are both working hard. Our reward is the process not the product. It is the process that keeps us excited and intellectually stimulated. Really that is what it has always been about but when I was younger, I thought I needed recognition and reward to validate my efforts. I never liked the beating the bushes part anyway so it is pretty wonderful to have reached this stage in life when I can focus on what I do love....the process.

Bridge Crossing

No this isn't the bridge over the Rio Grande. This is the bridge crossing the Mississippi River near Baton Rouge. As we approached and crossed it I just kept snapping images. I love the feeling I have when crossing these structural steel bridges. The car eating up the pavement and the rush of the steel girders overhead. I put up three images hoping that maybe they will give you a bit of the feeling of charging across the bridge.

In my photography collection I have a monotone 36x36 inch image of the underside of a bridge. The image was made by my friend David Fokos. I love that image because of it's strong graphic design. It speaks of strength and power. Shooting out the windshield of the car at 60 mph, my images don't hold a candle to the beauty of David's image but I like the crisp design and the feeling of moving through a tunnel (or door) to the other side, another place, a new adventure.

It Is That Time of Year - SoFoBoMo

Solo Foto Book Month - SoFoBoMo. June 1st was the beginning of the two month period during which you can choose any contiguous 31 day period to photograph and make an on-line book. It is not a competition. It is a challenge for photographers to "just do it." Make a book. Finish a project. 

I did it last year. My book was Eastwood Today. Going into the two month time period I had several ideas and one of them immediately stepped forward and became THE book. Doing SoFoBoMo was hard work. The hardest part was the learning curve for designing the book. So now you would think that I have that part of the learning curve behind me but this year the problem seems to be settling on a project. 

I did a lot of shooting during our short time in New Orleans.  I was there. I was a tourist. I responded to the colors, especially in the Garden District. I could probably find 35 images out of the 350-400 images I shot to put in the book but this idea isn't exciting me. On the other hand, while I have time to do another project, I've have no ideas. At least not this morning.  The clock is ticking. tick . . . tick . . . tick.

Blues and Purples

What a palette of colors I found in the Garden District in New Orleans. And we only walked down Coliseum Street. Who knows what other hidden treats are tucked away behind wrought iron fences and flowers.

The Big Easy

Yes, we are in New Orleans for a few days. Although the weather hasn't been very cooperative, we have still had time to walk our legs off. The afternoon we arrived we walked Bourbon Street. Let me be honest, Bourbon Street stinks. Literally and figuratively. At 5 PM the smell was not pleasant in many places. Bourbon Street has always included strip shows and bars but there also use to be wonderful places where you could hear New Orleans jazz. Now it is pretty much strip shows, bars and people who are well on their way to being very drunk by 6:30 PM.  Bourbon Street is a strange, dirty, smelly and very tacky place.

Yesterday we walked and walked in the Garden district. I love walking through neighborhoods and these are such colorful neighborhoods. The New Orleans palette includes purples, blues and lavenders. I just love those combinations with dusty pink crepe myrtles or the blue of agapanthus. There are also houses painted in rosy warm colors accented with green doors. Another great combination. Yes, I've taken lots of pictures and I'll have them processed later....it may not be until we are back home.

Today we covered more of the French Quarter and downtown. I especially wanted to see the Roosevelt Hotel where we went on our honeymoon so many years ago. We talked to Ray who works in the hotel and he told us that the hotel has only been reopened for a year. During Katrina it had water in the lobby for three months. He said that mold was everywhere and it took a long time to restore it. Hard to believe. But it is beautiful now. We asked if at Christmas time they still decorated the whole lobby which runs from one block to another. He told us how many Christmas trees, birch trees and lights they used. It must have been something to see even if they didn't cover the ceiling with angel hair because of the fiber glass.  Maybe we'll have to go back at Christmas time again. I'd love to see it.

And then there is the food......but that will have to be another entry.