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This blog is intended to showcase my pictures or those of other photographers who have moved beyond the pretty picture and for whom photography is more than entertainment - photography that aims at being true, not at being beautiful because what is true is most often beautiful..

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Entries in POD books (9)

Friday
Jul222016

Ireland / Scotland ~ fait accompli

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Ireland book ~ • click to embiggen
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Scotland book ~ • click to embiggen
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Outtakes book ~ • click to embiggen

Done at last, done at last. Thank the picture gods, I'm done at last ... or .....at least I think so*.

After what seemed like a blurry-eyed eternity, I have finished processing pictures from our Ireland and Scotland trip. The books are finished and ready for printing - I am waiting for the next 50% off sale at Shutterfly. Otherwise the books,in total, would cost approximately $350USD. The next sale should start by the middle of next week.

Fyi, the books are 8×8 as opposed to my 'normal' 10×10 size. I wanted the finished products to look and feel more like picture albums rather than as books.

Also fyi, here's the project by the numbers ...

The pictures:

  • 1946 - total pictures made on trip
  • 545 - pictures processed
  • 345 - final pictures
  • 239 - pictures in books

The books:

  • 100 pgs / 95 pictures - Ireland book
  • 94 pgs / 91 pictures - Scotland book
  • 59 pgs / 53 pictures - Outtakes book
*It might not be over yet inasmuch as I am thinking about challenging myself, editing wise, by trying to make Ireland / Scotland books edited down to 1/3 - 1/2 the number of pictures - just to see it can be done successfully. The wife will be the judge of that.
Monday
Jan112016

2015 ~ The Year in Review - an old sorry tale but more true than ever

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2105 year in review book covers ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

Long ago a picture must have been an event. Capturing a living image has become too ordinary a miracle, perhaps. They go about their automatic-drive Nikons and OM-2's and their Leicaflexes, and put their finger on the button, and the hand-held machinery makes a noise like a big toy cricket. Reep, reep, reep, reep. A billon billion slides, projected once, labeled, and filed forever. Windrows of empty yellow boxes blow across the Gobi., the Peruvian highlands, the temple steps at Chichicasenango. The clicking and whirring and clacking is the background sound at the Acropolis, at the beach at Cannes, on the slopes at Villefranche. All the bright people, stopped in the midst of life, looking with forced smile into the lenses, then to be filed away, their colors fading as the years pass, caught there in slide trays, stack loads, view cubes, until one day the camera person dies and the grandchild says, "Mom, I don't know any of these people. Or where these we're even taken. There are jillions of them in this big box and more in the closet. What will I do with them anyway?"

"Throw them out, dear."


thoughts in the head of the fictitious character Travis McGee

This excerpt from the John MacDonald book, The Empty Cooper Sea (published in 1978), is a very prescient sentiment about the current picture making world. Substitute a few digital era words for the antiquated analog era words - while there most certainly are still Nikons, OMs and Leicas, the modern day reality regarding slide trays (et al) and the big storage box is the computer. With that word substitution, the passage could have been written last week.

While reading the aforementioned MacDonald book, this passage spoke to me and smacked me upside the head. Especially so inasmuch as I have been working on putting together my 2016 ~ The Year in Review book. A book with 50+ picture pages - one picture per page - with all manner of pictured referents, as opposed to a single themed body of work. An coincidentally, the wife and I had a recent conversation instigated by her question to me,"What's going to happen to your pictures after you die?"

It was and is very good question and one for which I do not have a completely adequate answer.

That written, I do have 16 POD books consisting of books which illustrate different bodies of work. Approximately 700 of 7,100+/- of my pictures are presented in those books. There are most likely 300-400 pictures yet to mined from my "finished" library and placed in other POD books.

So, as long as I live for another month or so - as far as I know my life is not threatened in any manner - I should have approximately 1/7 of my pictures in print form of one kind or and other. That number of pictures would be more than adequate to create a reasonable legacy / example of my work.

Of course, the "boxes", aka: external hard drives - one primary, one backup, in which all of work is stored would be left behind albeit not in a closet (I hope).

How about you? Are you doing anything about preserving your pictures? Do you even care?

PS - even though my visit numbers and page views here on the Landscapist are holding at a satisfactory level, comments are way down. This blog use to be a pretty lively place, comment wise. Comments which addressed not my pictures but rather thoughts and ideas a bout the medium of photography and its apparatus. It's starting to become a bit on the boring side for me.

Monday
Dec212015

kitchen life # 77 / book covers ~ holiday tasks

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used tea bags ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
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TREES book covers ~ • click to embiggen
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URBAN FLORA book covers ~ PARK • click to embiggen

I've been busy with a passel of year-end / holidays things.

Prominent amongst them has been the design of 4 POD books that I want to get ordered before the end of the year. Since I use my books as portfolios for presentation to gallery directors / owners, they are considered marketing pieces which are tax deductible. So I want to get them in under the wire for the 2015 tax year.

In addition to the 2 books pictured in this entry I am also working on a Noir book and a 1/5 second book. There will be a pinhole book. However, I do not have enough pinhole pictures in my nascent pinhole body of work to create a book. That book will have to wait until some time next year.
Friday
Dec112015

civilized ku #3023 / noir covers / photo noir #5-6 ~ hotdogs 

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restaurant fireplace ~ Lake Placid, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
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Noir book covers ~ Lake Placid, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
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photo noir # 5 ~ • click to embiggen
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photo noir # 6 ~ • click to embiggen

Even though, in all probability, most of my submissions to the Photo Noir exhibition judging will be BW pictures, in the book I am working on the pictures will be in color. The reason for that is simple ... inasmuch as my pictures of the dark / night are not made with the intention of evidencing bleak pessimism, and a lurking sense of danger (although, dependent upon the perspective of a viewer they might be interpreted in that sense), color works better than BW. Whereas BW works better than color, in most cases, in evincing the pessimism / danger feeling, picture wise, that the exhibition gallery director seems to be seeking.

That written, I may make a BW Noir as a counterpoint to the color version.

On another subject, re: photo noir, I am wondering if a picture that intends to evoke the feelings associated with film noir requires the actual visual presence of a person. Or, is the suggestion of pessimism / danger, sans person, that intimates that the viewer of a noir picture is him/herself in danger enough? The conclusion I am coming to is that it can work either way.

As always, I am open to reading different opinions other than mine on the subject.
Tuesday
Dec152009

fyi - act now, supply is limited

Click here to view this photo book.


I didn't make an entry yesterday because I spent the day making the POD book pictured above. Xmas presents, don't you know.

While the book is not intended as my "definitive" statement, re: my pictures of Tuscany, it is a very good first look. The book is 12×12 with 49 pages and 44 pictures. I could easily see taking that out to 90-100 pages with 80-90 pictures, which would make for a fairly expensive POD book.

However, this book was no so expensive because of a current offer from Shutterfly - full price for the 1st book, a 50% discount on all copies ordered at the same time. By ordering 4 books, my per-book price - including tax and shipping - was a tad over $80US. Or, looking at it another way, the 1st book was approx. $120US and the next 3 were approx. $60US/ea.

So, that said, I have one extra book that I am making available for the low-low price of $60US (+ the buyer's shipping method of choice). What a deal. If you are interested, send me an email. If more than 1 person is interested, I can order more at the same discount (at least for as long as the Shutterfly deal lasts).

I would also be open to a POD book swap for those of you who have one to swap.

BTW / FYI - clicking on "Click here to view this photo book" will take you to Shutterfly where a full screen version of the book can be viewed.

And, as always, comments are welcome and appreciated.

Monday
Jan122009

ku # 548 ~ some ins and outs

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More rime ice above the West Branch of the Au Sableclick to embiggen
Continuing with our POD theme, we move on to the blank page / content.

But, before going there, I would be remiss if I didn't mention one critical factor, in fact, the most critical factor in obtaining good results - your monitor and its calibration.

Simply stated reasonable monitor calibration is a must but notice that I used the word "reasonable", not "perfect". That's because, at least on the Mac side of things, there is a way to achieve decent monitor calibration without having to own a calibration device. For those of you using a Mac, that procedure can be found in your System Preferences / Display settings. It's a fairly intuitive process and even if you don't get it exactly right it will still be a lot better than not doing it.

Important Caveat: Monitor calibration - with or without a calibration device - should be performed in a darkened environment as should all image editing. The monitor screen should have little or no ambient light striking it. That's the way the "big boys" do it.

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Workstationclick to embiggen

My workstation is on a countertop installed in an alcove. The walls/ceiling in the alcove are painted a neutral 50% grey. My monitor and keyboard sit on a large black desktop blotter. The room lighting is on a dimmer switch set to very dim.

I am certain that most of you will not go to these lengths but here's the important thing. Try to calibrate in the same light conditions in which you will do your image editing. In other words, DON'T calibrate in a room flooded with daylight and then edit at night with tungsten light. Try your utmost to keep the room light constant both in intensity and color temperature. Think of it as the correct "white balance".

Now, on to the blank page.

I do all of my book design and layout, to include typography, in Photoshop. Photoshop's type tools are pretty sophisticated at this point. No, they are not as good as InDesign but they are more than up to the task of the requirements of photo book design wherein pictures, not typography, is the feature.

Pro power-user that I am, I use the full version of PS. I believe that PS Elements has type tools as well. If you do not have either of these programs, in order to work with a blank page you must have a page layout program that allows you to work with type and images together and that also allows you to output / save the results as a PDF - although that PDF will have to be opened / rasterized in an image editing program in order to create a hires (300dpi) jpeg for upload to the service provider.

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Leather cover with cut out window / first inside pageclick to embiggen
In any event, I start in PS with a 300 dpi (ppi), white background, RGB file that is sized to the page size of the book I am designing. Typically, for me, that is either a 12×12 inch or an 8×8 inch size file. Therefore, as an example, my blank page is a PS RGB file that is 8 in. x 8 in, 300 dpi, and has a white background.

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Copyright / Statement spreadclick to embiggen
At that point, the real business of design/layout begins and, IMO, the guiding principle from here on out is keep it simple.

The first question a good designer asks him/herself is, "what's the point of this design exercise?" In our case, the answer is a relatively simple one, "to showcase pictures". The pictures are the thing, NOT typographic virtuosity or graphics wizardry. That is why in my books:

1. pictures are always presented with a white surround (essentially the equivalent of matting a picture for presentation).

2. type/text is (almost) always black or a shade of grey.

3. type/text is (almost) always relatively small.

4. graphic elements - lines, boxes, etc. are always small and subtle.

In short, because pictures are the thing, I like to keep all of the other elements of a photo book simple. The result of doing so will most always be a "clean" and "elegant" look and feel. Nothing gets in the way of viewing the pictures. They are allowed to speak for themselves. There are no distractions.

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Picture spread with image title pageclick to embiggen
A word to the wise regarding pictures presented with a white background. I know that there are probably more than a few out there who listen to picture framers' advice regarding the color of matting when it comes to framing your photographs. IMO, and quite frankly that of the rest of the Art world, there is only ONE color for matting and that is NONE, aka - white (or any number of subtle shades thereof).

The reason for this is simple - and goes back to your workstation environment - any color that you choose to surround your picture(s) with will greatly influence the eye's perception of the colors in those pictures - the stronger the color, the stronger the influence. Colored backgrounds in photo books wherein the pictures are intended to be presented as Art (or even art) is strictly for amateurs. The same can be said for printing pictures right out the edges of the page, aka - full bleed. The exception here is covers where full bleed is most often the rule rather than the exception.

All of that said, here are a few time-saving tips:

Make a master page file that has repetitive elements on it - things like page numbers (I don't use them), titles, captions, graphic elements and guides for image sizing placement.

I like to present all of my pictures at the same size and in the same place on each page. Once I have determined that size/placement by dragging a picture (holding down the shift key in order that the picture will be centered on the page) onto my master blank page and playing around with it using the transform tool, I drag guides to the edges of the image (View>Snap ON). Then I delete the picture layer and re-save the master file.

Type elements like titles, page numbers and captions can be saved in position in the master file by creating any of the elements on the master page using the type tool. Make a separate type layer for each element and position the element where you want it to be using the typeface and size you want them to be - actually type in a title / caption / page number. Once determined, save the master file leaving the type as editable type.

Once you have a master page file, all you need to do to make a new page is drag (shift key) an image file onto it and resize it to the guides you have set up. Then highlight any text with the type tool and enter the appropriate info - new title / caption / page number. Then save the file with a new name.

Then start again on that file - delete the image, drag a new one in, redo the text elements, and save again with a new name. Keep repeating the same procedure to create as many pages as you need. Working in this manner means that you will have only one working file open at a time. This may be very important if you have a limited amount of RAM.

Once you are done making pages, you can open them one at a time. Flatten them and save them as jpegs for upload to the service provider. With both Shutterfly and SharedInk I save the jpegs with the Adobe RGB (1998) color profile embedded. To be totally honest, I do NOT know how important the Abobe RGB (1998) color profile is to the results I obtain. I live in an Adobe RGB color space world - I shoot with that profile, I edit with that profile, and save all my files with that profile. If you live in an sRGB color space world (a smaller color space world), you might want to ask the appropriate customer support for advice on that.

For those of you working with a page layout / design program to make your book (such as InDesign, Quark, et al) you are going to have to save out your book as individual page pdfs. Then you will have to open them in PS (or some other image editing program) as a rasterized file at 300dpi in order to save them as jpegs for upload. To my knowledge, there are no POD photo book service providers who accept whole document pdf files or pdf files with vector type embedded in them.

I hope this short-ish how-to helps answer some questions. I am sure many of you will have more. Ask away.

Saturday
Jan102009

ku # 547 ~ 2 good reason to get the hell out of Dodge

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Rime ice on a ridgeline above the West Branch of the Au Sableclick to embiggen
Re; POD "standard" response, issue # 2 - the relatively confusing / non-intuitive nature of POD service provider's book making software.

What follows is directed towards dealing with Shutterfly.com's photo book making proceedures. To a great degree it also applies to SharedInk.com's preceedures as well.

FYI, SharedInk is my high-quality (high quality = high price) POD photo book service provider of choice. Their Professional Photographer program (which is "hidden" on their website - you must send an email request for info about it to get in) is really quite superb in features, options, etc.

The reason I use these 2 providers is simple. The quality of the product they deliver is consistently and predictably right on the mark. Up to snuff. As promised. No excuses. No hassles. Satisfaction guaranteed. Period. End of discussion.

Because of that, I have applied to become a member of Shutterfly's Affiliate Program whereby if anyone here on The Landscapist opens a free Shutterfly account through the link from The Landscapist, I'll make a couple bucks here and there.

I am also doing so because I will really be putting an emphasis on photo book making / sales in the foreseeable future here on The Landscapist. With the advent of the digital photography "revolution", there has been an adjunct revolution in heretofore unavailable photo book making that has been made available to Joe/Jane-the-anybody that could change the way pictures are being presented, preserved, and disseminated.

IMO, it's time that many more "serious" picture makers get with the program and I am going to do my part in making that happen.

Now, on to issue # 2 - Let's discuss choosing a POD service provider. As far as I am concerned, there are 2 key issues to address:

1). IMO, the absolute first obstacle a service provider must get by is the ability in their book making software to bypass their page layout templates. Or, more correctly, they must offer a page layout template that is a blank page (NO text boxes, NO picture boxes) with full-bleed (image printing right out to the edges of the page) capabilities. If they don't offer such a template, get the hell out of Dodge as fast as you can.

Why? Because a blank page template puts you in complete control of the design and layout process. That includes everything on the page - image placement, image size, number of images, text, text placement, typefaces, type spacing / kerning, background color(s), background textures/effects, and/or any other facet of page design. You take control. I don't know about you but I wouldn't have it any other way.

2). Once past that hurdle, the next issue is color - is there a method to obtain good consistent color results? In my experience, the best method is NO method at the service provider level.

Consider Shutterfly - they have as a default setting in their software their own idea of "image enhancement" called VividPics. This may be an effective enhancement for the uninitiated, but for those who know what they are doing relative to image adjustments (color, contrast, hue/saturation, and all of the other Photoshop or Photoshop-like image processing things) before they upload their pictures to Shutterfly, VividPics is NOT what the doctor ordered.

Shutterfly, as an example, recognizes this situation and provides for manual removal of this "effect". Good, in fact, very good, for them. However, I can not speak for other service providers other than SharedInk which, as far I can tell with their PP program, offer no image enhancement effects.

That said, the point is this - understanding what, if anything, is going to happen to your image files after they are uploaded to a service provider for book printing, is absolutely critical to obtaining good reproduction of your pictures. Just as in the blank-page layout scenario, the best results should be obtained by leaving you in total control of what the image looks like. As Shutterfly states in their FAQ regarding VividPics:

...if you have already edited your pictures for color, brightness, or contrast in an application such as Adobe Photoshop, we recommend that you turn off the VividPics setting for the edited pictures ... Pictures printed with this setting turned off will be printed exactly as they were uploaded...

Get it? "Exactly as they were uploaded" is exactly what you want. CAVEAT Be prepared. Because, without a doubt, what that means is that the old computer adage applies with full vigor - garbage in, garbage out. Of course, the flip side of that is something like - looks-like-a-rose in, smells-like-a-rose out.

Neverthless, my same advice applies to this issue - if a service provider doesn't offer info about their color management / "enhancement" techniques (if needed, contact their customer support), or, if they do but do not offer an option to turn it off, get the hell out of Dodge as fast as you can.

Now of course, I fully realize that having total control over page layout /design and image quality may be a form of absolute trepidation and intimidation for many. Without a doubt, my 40 years of experience in the photo, design, and printing industries makes these tasks about as difficult as falling off a log for me, which, in turn, with over 60 years of living behind me, is also a pretty easy thing for me to do.

I'll try in my next post to give you some simple tips on what to do with that blank page.

Friday
Jan092009

ku # 545/46 ~ attitude adjustment

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West Branch of the Au Sable Riverclick to embiggen
Yesterday's entry received 2 of the "standard" response types that I have heard / read almost every time the idea of POD photo books arises - 1) that of "quality" (which usually considered to be quite questionable) and 2) the relatively confusing / non-intuitive nature of POD service provider's book making software.

Let me address issue #1 with a bit of a story from my experience, starting with this from Jörg Colberg @ Conscientious:

I have been thinking about landscape photography a lot lately. The problem with that type of photography is that there appears to be a sweet spot that is sandwiched between extremely decorative - some would probably prefer the word "kitschy" - work (everything you see in "National Geographic") and extremely boring work (think Ansel Adams). Both extremes typically spend too much time on technical details since they both resulted from a history in which the "combination of sharp focus, tonal richness, and clarity of detail [...] came more and more to be the subject of the photograph [...] rather than a tool for artistic expression." (Janet Malcolm, from "East and West", an article I found in her 1980 collection of articles "Diane & Nikon")

My first job as an assistant in a commercial photo studio was obtained because of my color printing skills and experience. The studio's most important client was Superba Cravats - at that time, the oldest and one of the largest manufacturers of neckwear in the United States. The account was a money-making machine - the company had several lines of neckwear (including the Johnny Carson Division) and every one of those lines needed advertising photographs for every season's new products. As long as the earth continued to spin and revolve around the sun, new neckwear spun out of Superba Cravats like calender clockwork.

Looking back on my experience with that account, it is very obvious that it was one of the most influential learning experiences I ever had in understanding both color picture making / printing and the reproduction (on a printing press) thereof.

As soon as a shooting session commenced - they could last up to 2 weeks - I was banished to the darkroom where I processed the 5×7 inch color negative films and began grinding out 16×20 inch color "C" prints under the demanding and watchful eye of the account creative director. To say he was "particular" about color is an understatement of gargantuan proportions. Over and over again, I would have to make prints with minutely incremental color changes in order to demonstrate / prove to him that the color of a given necktie(s) could not be reproduced given the constraints / limitations of the color negative / C print process.

Those constraints / limitations were, of course, one of the very reasons we were going the negative / print route - once we arrived a satisfactory print, it was off to the retoucher for corrections and further adjustments. With airbrush and dyes, a retoucher could obtain a closer color match on some of the more difficult to match photographically (if not impossible) product colors.

Once that was finished, the prints were off to the mechanical artist for final ad prep and from there to the pre-press bureau for the separations needed (insert here all of the constraints / limitations of the conversion to CMYK color space) for submission to the various publications in which the ads were running. Where, once they were on press, a whole other set of printing-press, ink-on-paper set of limitations were introduced.

What you ended up with on the printed page was an approximation of the original photograph, closer in some colors than others and, with some colors, really not very close at all. And, if you went to the aggravating extreme of laying a necktie from the picture next to/on the printed page, well, at that point, if didn't put a gun to your head, you'd have to wonder what the point, not to mention all the expense, of all the print fine-tuning and retouching actually was.

What I learned from this experience, aside form all the really valuable technical stuff about color photography / print reproduction (most of which I put to use every time I work in Photoshop), was that the client seemed to have missed the point of what we were doing. For all of his preoccupation with color, he seemed to miss the fact that nobody was walking into a haberdashery, printed page in hand, and trying find a tie that look exactly like the one in the ad. If that were the case, they would have never sold a single piece of neckwear.

So, here's the point relative to POD books - if you are expecting the printed page to look exactly like your pictures, get over it. Even allowing for medium to medium conversion differences, if you are expecting the printed page to be mistaken for a photographic print, get over it. If you are expecting it to look anything like what you see on your carefully calibrated monitor, get over it.

It's just not going to happen. It's not only not going to happen with POD book printing, it's not going to happen on an 8-color high-end non-digital press. That's because it's a reproduction of a printed picture. You need to think of it in the same way you do about the difference between the real world and the reproduction of it you get when you make a picture of it - neither reproduction is the same as the "real" thing. Similar, yes - exact, no.

On that note, let me also point out that I, as a viewer of a photo book (of any kind of printing), have absolutely no idea of what the picture makers original prints look like. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. Therefore, I am not comparing anything. I am looking at pictures, which, unless there is some obvious and visually obtrusive reproduction problems, I just look at them at face value.

There's also another way to think about it. A bit extreme perhaps, but instructive and valuable nevertheless. Again, from Jörg Colberg:

...you could show me a Diane Arbus photo reprinted in a newspaper and it would still be a fantastic photo. Maybe that would be a good criterion for What makes a great photo: If the photo still looks great if you print it in a newspaper it's a great photo.

So, IMO, you "quality" whiners just have to get over it. My experience with several POD photo book printers (Shutterfly in particular) is that, once you learn the in and outs of their particular system, they all (with blurb being the one exception that I know about) deliver pretty high level of what is known in the printing industry as commercially acceptable reproduction. In fact, the level of reproduction they deliver from an POD digital press is actually quite better than that generally obtainable from a standard press only a few years ago.

Therefore, if "quality" is your excuse, let me amend yesterday's proclamation to read:

"Bullshit! Get over it. Just suck it up and get it done."

And, to walk the walk, and not just talk the talk, I will design and print, at my expense, a standard 8×8 or 8.5×11 POD photo book of the work of one lucky Landscapist contestant who can convince me (money is NOT accepted) why I should do their book over all others.

Just click on the "Email Me" link in the right column and start seducing me.