Monday, July 26, 2010

SoFoBoMo 2010 - third photo book finished!


Valkmusa marsh, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

I thought I was done with SoFoBoMo this year, having finished two photo books. But then I started wondering whether it would be possible to make a book with black-and-white photographs using the square format (1:1 aspect ratio). This was sort of challenge to myself. And then I just did it.

The photographs were taken between Friday and Sunday last week, in south-east Finland. I did the layout and writing on Monday, using the same workflow as for my other SoFoBoMo books. I did a little bit of tweaking to make the black-and-white photographs come out well. But this was a quick job, nothing fancy, just to satisfy a certain curiousity about black-and-white square photographs.

The name of the book is Summer in black and white squared, and it is available in PDF at the SoFoBoMo site. The book illustrates summer in Finland: marsh, forest and lake views as well as garden, grill and sauna activities.

In the original version I had 80 pages, but I ran into the 15 MB file size limit at the SoFoMoBo site. Instead of trying to find out a better compression, I just deleted pages, four at a time, until the file size was under 15 MB. The final book has 64 pages.

And if you haven't yet done a SoFoBoMo photo book, there is still time, until the end of this month. (I'm joking. Sort of.)

Here is an updated listing of photo books which I have done in 2009-2010:

6 comments:

Jarno said...

As a person who knows next to nothing about photographing and never takes photos in B&W, my first thoughts were: "Oh man, such nice nature photos spoiled by being in B&W", but when I saw the pictures from ch. 3 onwards I totally changed my mind. Thanks for sharing that work of art with us!

Andreas said...

Juha, you're showing off. That's considered indecent behavior :)

Awesome!

Anonymous said...

Juha,

I downloaded the PDF and it looks fantastic.

I also like the new B&W ones (Valkmusa marsh) in Flickr.

Great job!

Art

--------

Juha Haataja said...

@Jarno: Well, b&w is, well, different. And I agree that it is very difficult to take good landscape photographs in b&w. I wasn't completely happy with those that are here.

@Andreas: No, that was just being stubborn. I'm not completely convinced it was worth the effort, though.

@Anonymous: Well, I rather think the color photographs of Valkmusa came out better.

Markus Spring said...

Juha, Andreas is right: this behaviour *is* indecent!

But the book is wonderful!

Juha Haataja said...

@Markus: Ok, then I guess I am...