Blurb Trade Books

I recently discovered that in addition to their quite pricey ‘photo books’, Blurb also let you make substantially cheaper ‘trade books’. I found a few blog posts from people who had used the trade book service as a cheaper alternative to the photo book service & seemed happy with the results, so I threw together a bunch of pics in Adobe InDesign using Blurb’s template for the smallest trade book size & this is the result.

The quality is actually pretty nice. I’ve never been particularly impressed by the quality of Blurb’s photo books (I own several) considering their price, but the quality of these trade books is pretty good for their price. This one is 84 pages & came out at £9.11 before postage, which is really the only issue – you end up paying £6.99 postage unless you find a valid coupon via Google.

These are all film snaps from the past couple of years, a mix of 35mm & 120, all scanned on the V600. I should’ve included some more colour shots, but evidently I haven’t shot much colour film in recent years!

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Snapsh!ts

Another roll of Tri-X through the Bessa @ 1600. Developed slightly different than usual – did a 5 minute pre-soak & agitated more vigorously throughout.

Introducing Yelim to the Shewee.

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Continue reading Snapsh!ts

Return to Covent Garden

Back in December 2011 I was in London with a Yashica-Mat 124G that I had just bought on eBay. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the Mat was actually broken & of the full 12 shots I took on that first roll only half actually came out. As far as I can tell, the rest were actually shot onto the backing paper. That roll was also the first time I ever developed a film myself, so looking back at it I was incredibly lucky to get such a nice photo of the Christmas decorations at Covent Garden, which looked even better when I rescanned it when I got my Epson V600.

I told myself that if Covent Garden had the same decorations up again, I would go down better prepared with a tripod & camera I knew worked properly. Well Christmas 2014 came around & the same decorations went up, so I hopped on the train with my RB67 Pro SD, a 5-pack of Tri-X & a nice Manfrotto tripod borrowed from work. Well, not so much hopped, as it was rather a heavy setup!

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Of course ‘the best laid plans’ etc. & the shoot didn’t go quite as perfectly as I had hoped. It was quite late on a Sunday night by the time I made it out & got set up, so there were far fewer people than I had expected & the same bustling Christmassy atmosphere wasn’t really there. But conversely, because there were fewer people & the parasols were down, you could actually see from the vantage point all the way to the back of the building & the pillars across the entry. The flare from the lamps is unfortunate as well, but I’m honestly not sure how I could’ve avoided that – something to learn for the future!

I took a bunch of shots, both from the same off-centre position as 2011 & from the exact centre. None of the shots jumped out like that original 2011 shot, but there were a couple that I was relatively pleased with (click for bigger).

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Snapsh!ts

Just some unedited snapsh!ts going back a year probably. Starting with a field in Iceland, exciting stuff right?

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A more recognisable image of Iceland.

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Shooting 6×7 at the Burn House.

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Somewhere in Edinburgh, on my way to see Makoto Shinkai at Scotland Loves Animation.

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Aikmans (again).

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Probably wanted to use up the last shot so I could stick it in the dev tank.

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Mounting prints for a PhotoSoc exhibition & auction.

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And at the auction the following day.

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Department Xmas party?

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