SoFoBoMo - a big pile of books

Rocks and reeds, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Gravel road, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Two weeks ago I finished my hasty (three-day) SoFoBoMo project. The pdf is available in two sizes, 23 MB and 4 MB, the bigger is better.

At this moment it feels that I didn't do too badly, and I learned a bit of photography in the process, especially about shooting on the streets (of Copenhagen). And the use of two-page spreads with two related images was a good idea, although I could have implemented it a bit better.

It feels really good to have the book at the SoFoBoMo site. But even greater is to see all the finished books - what a treasure trove! And new ones are appearing daily, which is great.

Here are two images from yesterday, which was once again a rainy day. Tomorrow may be a bit better, though.

SoFoBoMo - it is done (1-2-3 days is all that was needed)

I was all but given up on the idea of finishing a SoFoBoMo project, but in a couple of days things changed. There was a long-lasting illness circulating in the family, but that passed. Then, I made a work trip to Copenhagen, and took some photographs there. When back at home I realized there was enough images (barely, but still) for a photobook.

I took the photographs on Tuesday and Wednesday and made the post-processing and typesetting on Thursday. Three days in all, not bad, but I don't have any more time to use for this either.

The resulting photobook is called A Walk in Copenhagen (23 MB pdf file), and contains 40 pages. There are over 35 photographs in the book, so all the formal requirements of the SoFoBoMo project should be fulfilled.

Edit: I uploaded a smaller pdf (4.1 MB file) to the SoFoBoMo site, using the "worst" quality when exporting to pdf in the Pages application, because of the 15 MB maximum filesize limit. The image quality isn't so good in this version, unfortunately.

Edit 2: I generated (using GhostScript) a new version of the "big" PDF file, the filesize is now 7.7 MB and the quality good or better than the old 23 MB version.

I made the photobook using the Pages typesetting program, throwing together the book from the edited and selected images in about two hours, which included writing all the texts. I used my earlier practice photobook as the format, so there was no need to fiddle with page sizes etc. details this time around. I did change the format a little bit, but only a little.

I think I'll rest for a while, and not do something like this for a while. But this was a nice little project for one evening (and the walking in Copenhagen). Perhaps I'll do something similar some day.

I wish you luck with your SoFoBoMo project! And if you don't have such a one going at the moment, perhaps it would be worth a try.

Update: I forgot to say that I designed the book using two-page spreads, so it should be viewed that way, as image pairs. So, the images are not in strict chronological order, instead I tried to organize them in mathing pairs.

Update 2: There is now a list of completed SoFoBoMo '09 books.

Update 3: Martin Doonan has provided a very helpful guide to jpeg compression settings when making a photobook. I should have done something like this with my photobook. Instead, I took the easy way out and just used the different pdf output settings in Pages.