Year Book Photos...

As a result of a review of my book I got on Blurb I have put together the following flash presentations:

Long List - These are the 50 photographs I choose for the bok

Actual Photos - These are the photos that made the book and the order they appear in the book.

I hope this makes sense

Ramsdale, Vellum and Blurb...

So there I was standing in the document room of the records office looking at a scroll that was over 230 years old and I started to wonder if anything I have produced in my life would last this long? Who knows, certainly know that if there is then I won't be around to see it. The document in question was the enclosure award for the parish of Ratby. I was trying to locate 'Ramsdale' for the historical research I am working on and after 3 hours of searching I found it. A small triumph for me - I must admit I did feel quite pleased with myself.

I have droned on in the past about the ephemeral nature of digital files, here today but not sure about tomorrow. To address this I have taken my first step in preserving my work by publishing my first book with Blurb. It has the catchy title of 2009. Now this is not printed on vellum so I don't know how long it will last but I fell it may have a better chance than all my digital files. Only time well tell.

Notes on Blurb photobooks...

This is a note on what I have found out so far about setting up prints for printing in a Blurb book. Whether anyone finds this of any use is not really the point - it helps me:

Tutorial Training Video

Blurb use an in depth video produced by xcite to give you information about how to set your monitor up and ICC profiles etc. One or two points with the video:

1. The video mentions a location where the ICC profile can be downloaded. This location does not exist;
2. '...Blurb does not technically honor color/ICC profiles...' is the starting statement from the Blurb support site. This probably explains why No 1. does not work. The info on producing a PDF file for Blurb also provide some information around the whole ICC profile question.
3. An independent user has produced a ICC profile which mirrors the one that Blurb uses. This is mentioned in Blurb's official blog - however when you go to the blog site it is covered in so many legal get outs that you have to wonder if it is worth using. Note: This was published in 2007 so how up to date this is really has to be questioned.

So from all of this I think the best way forward would be to use the standard CMYK profile in photoshop and then soft proof using this. According to the Xcite tutorial you loose about 10 % of the gamut compared to the Blurb profiles - however, as Blurb do not state what their profile is then this is a bit difficult to varify.

2009 Year Book...

With the new year fast approaching I have decided to take stock and produce a year book for the last 12 months. I have been thinking about this for some time - may be a year or so after it was suggested to me by my good friend Diane. However, I have put this of and put this off but now I am going to to do it.

I am in the process of designing the layout but one thing I want to include is a selection of the entries for each month from this blog. I am going to do this for two reasons. The first it gives a good feel and flavour as to what I was thinking at the time the photographs were made. The second is to provide a permanent record of this blog. I am becoming more concerned that with digital age comes no guarantee of preservation - this blog is provided, free of service by Google - but what if they didn't do that any more? What if they turned it off or deleted it? Where is the record then? At least this way I will have some record. So let the work commence and hopefully by the end of January I should be the proud owner of my first year book - can't wait.