I schlepped my photo book, Three Days in Brooklyn, around New England and
showed it to a lot more people. I've now
showed it to maybe three dozen people, from family to fairly casual friends.
I've learned some things.
It's going to be a long time before web and computer or TV screen replaces a
photo book as a way to present images. We
are still tactile creatures. Holding the book in hand, the tactile feel of the
pages as they are turned, flipping back
and forth, being able to hold the image at different distances and angles - all
of these seem to play into the
experience and affect the viewer's reaction to the images themselves, both
individually and as a set. Being bound
together seems to lead people to consider the set as a whole work much more
than a web gallery
Some of these people had seen, or had the opportunity to see, many of these
images in my web album, but were much more
engaged by the printed versions. The page size of 8.5 x 10.75 seemed to be big
enough. No one suggested it should be bigger.
Either people are very sweet/considerate - and really good actors, or this is
quite a good book. Many thought it was or
should be a "real" book, for sale in shops and on-line. I'd say the reaction
ranged from 7-10 on the old 1-10 scale,
with the average closer to 9 than 7. I thought it was good, but was surprised
how good others think it is.
What was really fascinating was watching people, and often interacting with
them, as they went through the book. The
book has quite a varied range of subjects, from almost abstract through very
intimately close-up images of people. Which
images engaged viewers varied widely.
There are images that attracted the attention of most viewers, but were passed
over almost without looking by a few. A
couple that I thought told an interesting story obviously didn't to much of
anyone but me. Others that I wasn't sure
about including engaged the attention of a majority of viewers.
The last person I showed it to in Maine was really moved by an image to which
everybody else had apparently paid little
or no attention. That made me feel a little better about my choices to include.
I had to edit almost 200 images down to
100 for the book. Some choices were easy, some hard. Now I feel those that got
little attention in the book still have
someone other than me out in the world to whom they would, perhaps still will,
speak.
I will almost certainly do another book, sooner rather than later. Probably
images of nature, in contrast to the urban
setting of my first.
Book Moose
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