Zemni Images

Photography, moving image, design and illustration of Linda Mayoux

Photobooks: design and publishing

Category: Presentation

  • Photobooks: design and publishing

    Print-on-demand and self-publishing

    The expansion on print-on-demand services now makes self-publishing fairly straightforward. These enable direct sales through companies like Amazon at price mark-ups decided by the photographer. There are a number of services on offer that I looked at:

    Review of options: https://www.cnet.com/news/best-and-worst-photo-book-making-websites-for-you/

    But the one I chose – it is UK-based and offers the most flexibility together with full integration with Adobe CC Lightroom and InDesign is

    This was very competitive on pricing with frequent price reduction deals once you are signed up. Shipping from Netherlands keeps postal costs reasonably low (will Brexit add taxes????) – though it is still more cost-effective to wait and order multiple publications. Blurb has teamed up with Adobe to enable easy compilation of books using plug-ins for Lightroom and InDesign. Blurb has its own software, but this offers less flexibility to edit images as they have to be sized, cropped and processed before they are laid out. The greatest flexibility for editing of the images is given in Lightroom. InDesign allows for much more sophisticated layouts of tiff images that can then be edited in Photoshop.

    However the choice of book format and size, and paper stock is still limited compared to professional book publishing services.

    Professional bookbinders

    Bookbinding is a very specialist craft. Professional bookbinders can offer a range of quality services: mixing paper stocks, customised endpapers, gatefold pages and matching slipcases and boxes. A professional bookbinder can offer advice on materials and other design aspects, such as how easy it will be to physically open your book with your particular choice of paper, and how far your image needs to be printed from the gutter to be viewed properly, for example.

    For an overview of different types of binding see

    http://design.zemniimages.info/4-materials-and-process/binding/  (to be fully developed)

    Book design issues

    Some points to consider when designing or evaluating

    • Rationale: What is the purpose of the book? What is the main concept? Who is it for? Why do you want to present your work in a book? Is the book format really the most suitable medium in which to present your work? A badly printed or poorly designed book of your photographs will not be as well received as a simpler portfolio of good quality prints.
    • Selection and Editing: Edit your work strictly before even considering the layout.  Do all the images sit comfortably next to each other. Do any seem out of place? Can this be resolved, or should they be omitted?
    • Sequencing: Sequencing is paramount: consider how certain images relate to each other (graphically as well as in terms of the ‘connotations’ of an image, or the juxtaposition of images within the sequence).
    • Text: Will you use text? What will you say? Will the text complement and reinforce the images, or challenge the viewer through contrast or contradiction?
    • Typeface What typeface and style will you use? Pay as much attention to the words and their layout as you do to your photographs. Your choice of typeface communicates a lot about how you want your photographs to be read.

    Book Module in Lightroom

    Webinar from Blurb

    Using InDesign series of videos

    Adobe InDesign gives much more control over layout and also links to Blurb, or can be exported to pdf for other Print on Demand services.

    For more discussion see my Book Design blog (to be completed by May 2017):

    http://design.zemniimages.info/principles-and-process/typography/

    http://design.zemniimages.info/principles-and-process/images/

  • Photobooks: Inspiration

    Types of Photobook

    Surveys and catalogues
    • catalogues for exhibitions
    • ‘Survey’ publications draw together a collection of individual images or a group of practitioners working in a similar area. Some surveys seem more didactic or directed at the art market, such as 50 Photographers You Should Know (2008), Vitamin Ph: New Perspectives in Photography (2009), reGeneration: 50 Photographers of Tomorrow (2005) and reGeneration 2: Tomorrow’s Photographers Today (2010).
    Monographs and artists’ books Monographs are mass-produced (relatively speaking), but often they are the primary context for the photographic work. A monograph published to coincide with an exhibition of an artist’s work may  draw together several different bodies of work, but it will be devoted to one practitioner alone. An artist’s book may be produced in editions, but is generally more individual in terms of its design, the materials used and the printing technique or finish. Some may be printed, stencilled, stitched and embossed by the maker themselves. Others will be a collaboration with a professional bookbinder and a graphic designer. Early photobooks Many of these were topographic images for travel and tourism.
    • Francis Frith photographs from travels to Middle and Far East
    • John Thomson photographs from travels to Middle and Far East
    • Maxime Du Camp (1822–94)
    • Auguste Salzmann (1824–72)
    • Josiah Dwight Whitney (1819–96) published The Yosemite Book in 1868.
    Some developed more innovative design
    • Soviet and Fascist propaganda books with novel design features, such as fold-out pages that extend the dimensions of an image

    Inspiration

    I have a large collection, but not had time to look through or properly review apart from getting some layout ideas.

    Colour

    • Martin Parr: documentary photographer. Some of his works have been mass produced and re-printed (e.g. The Last Resort, 1986 and 1998); others have been limited editions or even more exclusive artist’s books such as Cherry Blossom Time in Tokyo, 2001. See: www.martinparr.com/books/. Layout in Last Resort has one, or very occasionally two, large images per spread, with white margin around and no border. This focuses attention on the content of the socially complex saturated colour images. There is a short introductory text at the beginning.
    • Paul Seawright : Invisible Cities a very large hardback book of colour images. Some images are full bleed crossing the whole spread, sometimes with some space to one side or top/bottom. Other spreads have only one half page image generally placed full bleed to one corner with the rest of the spread as white space. There is a text introduction to African cities at the beginning.
    • Urbex ‘Beauty in Decay’ this has beautiful limited palette images . The book is divided into chapters with some introductory text. But the book is mostly large images with  whitespace. Some images and spreads are on black background. A few text passages are on beige background. Some have black or white boders and vignettes to increase contrast.

    Black and white

    • Daido Moriyama  Tales of Tono – small portrait format book of very high contrast black and white images. Full bleed in landscape across a double spread on black background. This makes the abstract flashes of white shapes in the often barely readable images standout. Text is reserved for a narrative section at the end. I like the moodiness of this book and all the images demand close attention in themselves, as well as producing an overall edgy impression as a apparently random narrative.
    • Algirdas Seskus ‘Love Lyrics’ Lithuanian 149 contrasty documentary Black and White images in landscape format. No text except the number of each photo and date. One or two large images per spread. No border with generous white margin.
    • Arunas Baltenas  Vilnius  2007 images from 1987. Small misty sepia images one per spread with no border and lots of white space. Delicate handwritten titles and date. One page introduction in English and Lithuanian at the beginning. No other text. I find the delicate nostalgia of this book really beautiful.
    • Henri Cartier Bresson in India  Thames and Hudson. 1987 with forward by Bengali film director Satyajit Ray. One large black and white photo per page with short caption. Black border on white paper. Occasionally one large and one small. The images themselves are quite low contrast. The black border makes the eye focus inwards.
    At the Brighton Photography Biennial I saw a lot of interesting innovative designs, but did not have time to note all the details.
    • David Galjaard Concresco. A book about Albania. Has a brown opening cover with short explanatory text. Then  double page spreads with small white text insert pages. For this and other work see his website: http://www.davidgaljaard.nl
    • Dara McGrath ‘Deconstructing the Maze’  This has two coloured photographs on one side and page of text on the other. The strength here is in the photos. For this and other work see his website http://www.daramcgrath.com/index.html
    • Xavier Ribas  ‘Concrete Geographies’.  Photos of concrete blocks in Barcelona. See his website: http://www.xavierribas.com. This has inside views and links to vimeos of other books like Sanctuary – no text, one photo per spread. Sometimes a cross-over image. But the onscreen resolution is not good enough to really see the images.
    • Alessandro Rota A Neocolonialist’s diary.  Small paisley pattern cover. Coloured photos of sheets in Lusaka. Dark night streets. Lights. See his website . And vimeo of the book. https://vimeo.com/28099164
    • Irene Siragusa ‘Six weeks in Dublin’.   Lots of photos of spattered blood. Small juxtaposed rectangular images. website
    Unknown author/title glimpsed over other peoples’ shoulders:
    • Book with glued images folded.
    • Aids (author???).  Small and simple brown cover. Photos of slits one on a page opposite a blank page.

     Sources and overviews

    • The Photobook: A History, Volumes I,  ll and III Gerry Badger and Martin Parr
    • The Chinese Photobook: Martin Parr and Wassink Lundgren from the Photographer’s Gallery exhibition
    • Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s Ryuichi Kaneko and Ivan Vartanian
    • Channels on YouTube and Vimeo with videos of certain books;
    • Tate video about William Klein which shows his assistant with one of Klein’s early maquettes:
    •  José Navarro discussing OCA students’ photobooks
    OCA Student links Joe Wright

    Assignment 5: Perspectives on Kyrgyztstan

    ————————————-

    Photobooks offer a tactile one-to-one viewing experience for the reader were they control the place and time.  Photographer/designer can give detailed narrative guidance through the images by linear sequencing and juxtaposition in page layout. At the same time, the reader is freer to override this design and establish their own viewing experience.

    !! Rough notes and links. !! To be significantly updated for assessment with detailed

    Photobook Key Inspiration

    https://illustration.zemniimages.info/martin-parr
    https://illustration.zemniimages.info/alec-soth

    !! Sketchbook analysis of page design and layout of key sources of inspiration. bearing in mind copyright issues.

    Photobook History

    Early photobooks

    Many of these were topographic images for travel and tourism.

    • Francis Frith photographs from travels to Middle and Far East
    • John Thomson photographs from travels to Middle and Far East
    • Maxime Du Camp (1822–94)
    • Auguste Salzmann (1824–72)
    • Josiah Dwight Whitney (1819–96) published The Yosemite Book in 1868.

    Some developed more innovative design

    • Soviet and Fascist propaganda books with novel design features, such as fold-out pages that extend the dimensions of an image
    • Japanese Photobooks
    Colour
    • Martin Parr: documentary photographer. Some of his works have been mass produced and re-printed (e.g. The Last Resort, 1986 and 1998); others have been limited editions or even more exclusive artist’s books such as Cherry Blossom Time in Tokyo, 2001. See: www.martinparr.com/books/. Layout in Last Resort has one, or very occasionally two, large images per spread, with white margin around and no border. This focuses attention on the content of the socially complex saturated colour images. There is a short introductory text at the beginning.
    • Paul Seawright : Invisible Cities a very large hardback book of colour images. Some images are full bleed crossing the whole spread, sometimes with some space to one side or top/bottom. Other spreads have only one half page image generally placed full bleed to one corner with the rest of the spread as white space. There is a text introduction to African cities at the beginning.
    • Urbex ‘Beauty in Decay’ this has beautiful limited palette images . The book is divided into chapters with some introductory text. But the book is mostly large images with  whitespace. Some images and spreads are on black background. A few text passages are on beige background. Some have black or white boders and vignettes to increase contrast.
    https://illustration.zemniimages.info/martin-parr
    https://illustration.zemniimages.info/urbex
    Black and white
    • Daido Moriyama  Tales of Tono – small portrait format book of very high contrast black and white images. Full bleed in landscape across a double spread on black background. This makes the abstract flashes of white shapes in the often barely readable images standout. Text is reserved for a narrative section at the end. I like the moodiness of this book and all the images demand close attention in themselves, as well as producing an overall edgy impression as a apparently random narrative.
    • Algirdas Seskus ‘Love Lyrics’ Lithuanian 149 contrasty documentary Black and White images in landscape format. No text except the number of each photo and date. One or two large images per spread. No border with generous white margin.
    • Arunas Baltenas  Vilnius  2007 images from 1987. Small misty sepia images one per spread with no border and lots of white space. Delicate handwritten titles and date. One page introduction in English and Lithuanian at the beginning. No other text. I find the delicate nostalgia of this book really beautiful.
    • Henri Cartier Bresson in India  Thames and Hudson. 1987 with forward by Bengali film director Satyajit Ray. One large black and white photo per page with short caption. Black border on white paper. Occasionally one large and one small. The images themselves are quite low contrast. The black border makes the eye focus inwards.

    !! Insert annotated sketchbook pages of Flatpans of these and other selected photobooks.

    Contemporary Photobooks

    At the Brighton Photography Biennial 2016 I saw a lot of interesting innovative designs:

    • David Galjaard Concresco. A book about Albania. Has a brown opening cover with short explanatory text. Then  double page spreads with small white text insert pages. For this and other work see his website: http://www.davidgaljaard.nl
    • Dara McGrath ‘Deconstructing the Maze’  This has two coloured photographs on one side and page of text on the other. The strength here is in the photos. For this and other work see his website http://www.daramcgrath.com/index.html
    • Xavier Ribas  ‘Concrete Geographies’.  Photos of concrete blocks in Barcelona. See his website: http://www.xavierribas.com. This has inside views and links to vimeos of other books like Sanctuary – no text, one photo per spread. Sometimes a cross-over image. But the onscreen resolution is not good enough to really see the images.
    • Alessandro Rota A Neocolonialist’s diary.  Small paisley pattern cover. Coloured photos of sheets in Lusaka. Dark night streets. Lights. See his website . And vimeo of the book. https://vimeo.com/28099164
    • Irene Siragusa ‘Six weeks in Dublin’.   Lots of photos of spattered blood. Small juxtaposed rectangular images. website

    Unknown author/title glimpsed over other peoples’ shoulders:

    • Book with glued images folded.
    • Aids (author???).  Small and simple brown cover. Photos of slits one on a page opposite a blank page.

    !! Insert annotated sketchbook pages of Flatpans of these and other selected photobooks.

    Photobook How To

    https://zemniimages.info/photobooks-publishing/

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJCLNKoZ8gE

     Sources and overviews

    To do a proper annotated bibliography of a selection of the many photobooks I have in my library. Linked to the annotated sketchbook analysis.

    • The Photobook: A History, Volumes I,  ll and III Gerry Badger and Martin Parr
    • The Chinese Photobook: Martin Parr and Wassink Lundgren from the Photographer’s Gallery exhibition
    • Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s Ryuichi Kaneko and Ivan Vartanian
    • Channels on YouTube and Vimeo with videos of certain books;
    • Tate video about William Klein which shows his assistant with one of Klein’s early maquettes:
    •  José Navarro discussing OCA students’ photobooks

  • What are Artist’s Statements?

    An artist’s statement is sometimes referred to as a ‘statement of intent’. It can be seen as a marketing device, or simply as a means of describing practitioners’ interests. They:

    • vary in terms of their length and the details they cover.
    • may relate to a specific body of work or it may talk about practice more generally. probably contains information about any training (art college or other qualifications or experience relevant to their practice) and prizes, grants or awards that the artist has won, which are relevant to their practice. But is not the same thing as an artist’s CV, which lists any training, qualifications, awards, exhibitions and publications in much the same way as a conventional résumé.
    • huge variety in the style and format of artists’ statements; some will sound convoluted and esoteric and others will be more down to earth.

    The Artist Statement (UCA)

    A good artist statement will support your professional practice, for example:

    • Giving brief information to support an exhibition or catalogue
    • Submitting a proposal
    • Applying for a grant

    It should be:

    • Concise
    • Effective in communicating the details you wish to emphasize
    • Written in the first person
    • Written primarily in the present tense

    It should be adaptable in order to take into account:

    • Your audience
    • Your purpose or motivation for writing it

    It might contain information on:

    What your motivation is for the work you do:

    • What issues are you exploring and why?
    • What concepts, themes or convictions underpin your work?
    • How do your life experiences influence your work
    • How does your personality influence your work?
    • How have your ideas developed?

    The techniques and materials you use:

    •  How and why did you choose them?
    • What scale do you work in?
    • Do you have a particular process of working?
    • Do you intend to explore other techniques or materials?

    Your background:

    • Are you a student or a practicing artist?
    • Details of your educational history if you feel it appropriate
    • Have you contributed to any prestigious shows or events?

    How you contextualise your work:

    • Where do you feel you fit into the Contemporary Art World?
    • Does your work challenge the work of others?
    • Have you appropriated or referred to the work of others?
    • Your goals and aspirations and to what extent you have realised them
    • Personal reflections on your work

    Artists statements from other photographers

    Many photographers do not have artists’ statements on websites. They have a fairly straight biography, then either let the images speak for themselves, or put short text for each series of images and/or include interviews and articles where they talk about their aims and methods in some depth.

    Michael Tsegaye: – has a very short and succinct artist’s statement. Then informative overviews of his different portfolios. See post: Michael Tsegaye rough notes

    Nii Obodai – a biography and ‘meaning’ statement. All in the third person – I think this makes things less direct and more flowery. See post: Nii Obodai rough notes

    Mathua Mateka – quite a long artists’ statement with a lot of personal information that may or may not be relevant to understanding his photography. See post: Mathua Mateka rough notes.

    Emeka Okerere – another long one in third person. See post: Emeka Okerere rough notes.

    Paul Shambroom : very short, in 3rd person and mostly about his achievements rather than what he is trying to do. More of a biography.

    Alec Soth – example of understatement (in the knowledge that he is already famous!) Nothing about his approach or underlying aims.

    Jorma Puranen’s introduction to Imaginary Homecoming  cited in the coursebook is no longer at the link given. The definition of landscape:

    “A landscape is speechless. Day by day, its only idiom is the sensory
    experience afforded by the biological reality, the weather conditions, and the actions that take place in the environment. However, we can also assume that a landscape has another dimension: the potential but invisible field of possibilities nourished by everyday perceptions, lived experiences, different histories, narratives and fantasies. In fact, any understanding of landscape entails a succession of distinct moments and different points of view. The layeredness of landscape, in other words, forms part of our own projection. Every landscape is also a mental landscape.” (Jorma Puranen,1999, Foreword to Imaginary Homecoming, Oulu: Pohjoinen)

     

    5.6 My Own Artist’s Statement

  • Artists’ statements

    Exercise 5.7 Prepare your artist’s statement

    An artist’s statement is sometimes referred to as a ‘statement of intent’. It can be seen as a marketing device, or simply as a means of describing practitioners’ interests. They:

    • vary in terms of their length and the details they cover.
    • may relate to a specific body of work or it may talk about practice more generally. probably contains information about any training (art college or other qualifications or experience relevant to their practice) and prizes, grants or awards that the artist has won, which are relevant to their practice. But is not the same thing as an artist’s CV, which lists any training, qualifications, awards, exhibitions and publications in much the same way as a conventional résumé.
    • huge variety in the style and format of artists’ statements; some will sound convoluted and esoteric and others will be more down to earth.

    The Artist Statement (UCA)

    A good artist statement will support your professional practice, for example:

    • Giving brief information to support an exhibition or catalogue
    • Submitting a proposal
    • Applying for a grant

    It should be:

    • Concise
    • Effective in communicating the details you wish to emphasize
    • Written in the first person
    • Written primarily in the present tense

    It should be adaptable in order to take into account:

    • Your audience
    • Your purpose or motivation for writing it

    It might contain information on:

    What your motivation is for the work you do:

    • What issues are you exploring and why?
    • What concepts, themes or convictions underpin your work?
    • How do your life experiences influence your work
    • How does your personality influence your work?
    • How have your ideas developed?

    The techniques and materials you use:

    •  How and why did you choose them?
    • What scale do you work in?
    • Do you have a particular process of working?
    • Do you intend to explore other techniques or materials?

    Your background:

    • Are you a student or a practicing artist?
    • Details of your educational history if you feel it appropriate
    • Have you contributed to any prestigious shows or events?

    How you contextualise your work:

    • Where do you feel you fit into the Contemporary Art World?
    • Does your work challenge the work of others?
    • Have you appropriated or referred to the work of others?
    • Your goals and aspirations and to what extent you have realised them
    • Personal reflections on your work

    Examples from coursebook

    On the front page of Alec Soth’s website he writes:

    “My name is Alec Soth (rhymes with ‘both’). I live in Minnesota. I like to
    take pictures and make books. I also have a business called Little Brown
    Mushroom.” (http://alecsoth.com/photography)

    This is clearly very understated, perhaps even flippant, and it takes a reputation that precedes oneself to be able to write something as laconic as this! Often, an artist’s statement is written by another person (or is designed to sound as if it is by being written in the third person), which adds gravitas.

    Jorma Puranen’s introduction to Imaginary Homecoming is somewhat more convoluted,
    although it provides a thoughtful definition of landscape:

    “A landscape is speechless. Day by day, its only idiom is the sensory
    experience afforded by the biological reality, the weather conditions, and
    the actions that take place in the environment. However, we can also
    assume that a landscape has another dimension: the potential but invisible
    field of possibilities nourished by everyday perceptions, lived experiences,
    different histories, narratives and fantasies. In fact, any understanding of
    landscape entails a succession of distinct moments and different points
    of view. The layeredness of landscape, in other words, forms part of our
    own projection. Every landscape is also a mental landscape.” (Jorma Puranen,1999, Foreword to Imaginary Homecoming, Oulu: Pohjoinen)

    This statement about the work of Ola Kolehmainen is a good example of how a method of
    presentation is linked to the concept of the work:

  • Designing a project brief

    Project briefs are of different types and allow different levels of negotiation and artistic freedom.

    (what follows is from the Course Manual and will be revisited in Assignment 5)

    Commercial (client-led) briefs
    Any engagement with commercial photographic enterprise will involve a brief of some kind. This may be in the form of a legally binding contract, or it may be something much more informal. In a commercial context, a brief will usually be a document that is the conclusion of a verbal or email discussion about what the client is hoping to achieve from a shoot – i.e. what they want you to communicate with your photographs – and, importantly, what the intended outcome will be. Will the photographs be used in a book, for example? Or on a website? This second aspect has important ramifications in relation to the size, format and quality of files they are expecting, and may influence your choice of equipment. A brief written by a client may be fairly openended or it may include a list of specific products or subjects that need to be photographed, including aspect ratio and crop. It may be something prescriptive, to be referred to throughout the shoot, or something more abstract that you will respond to photographically using your own initiative.

    A brief should align the expectations of the clients with a realistic outcome on the part of the photographer. Whether you’re being paid generously for your services or doing a job as a favour, it is extremely important to have, in writing (email is fine), an agreement that clearly identifies the needs of the client and what you agree to supply them with, in order to prevent at best disappointment, or at worst, being sued. A brief should include the following:
    • A summary of the project and general purpose of the photographs.
    • What the photographs should communicate.
    • A list of any specific shots the client would like.
    • The amount of time that you will spend on the shoot (hours? days?) and timings.
    • The number of images you will supply to the client, and whether they will be processed or unprocessed.
    • Your fee, as well as/including any expenses you will incur.
    • Whether (if working digitally) your time for file processing is included or, if not, how this File format and size of processed images (and possibly colour profile and bit-depth).
    • Permission for using your photographs from the shoot: how will you permit the client to use your images, and for what period of time?
    • Whether you will administer Model and/or Property Release Forms.
    • Details of any other parties involved in the shoot, e.g. models/subjects.
    People who are in a position to commission photography may do so on a regular basis and, if so, will be expert in drawing up a brief and/or contract; other, just as valuable, clients may not. It may be down to you to put into writing their verbal description of what they want you to do. Forming a brief should be a negotiation between you and the client, and the specifics will depend on many factors, including your own particular workflow. The important thing is to make
    sure all parties are content with all aspects of the brief before commencing a shoot.

    [Although briefs are not discussed specifically, a wealth of related information can be found in Beyond the Lens: Rights, Ethics and Business Practice in Professional Photography, London: The Association of Photographers]

    Self-authored briefs
    This and subsequent courses you may study with OCA will ask you to set your own assignment briefs. The purpose of this is to allow you more creative freedom, to help you become a more independent student, and to encourage you to think of yourself as a creative, independent practitioner pursuing your own interests and working on personal projects, as opposed to making work within the confines of a prescriptive art and design course.
    Developing the ability to articulate your ideas for projects or enterprises is an essential skill for professional practice, within both commercial and art-based practice. For instance, you may identify a potential business opportunity to collaborate with an organisation that might be able to commission you, and approach them to propose a project. Or you may have an idea for a documentary or fine art project and need to apply for funding. In either case, you’ll need to
    write a brief. (This is explored further at Level 3.)

    A self-directed brief, particularly one conceived within an arts context (e.g. an academic environment such as OCA, or a proposal to a funding body such as the Arts Council – www. artscouncil.org.uk) will include some, but not necessarily the majority of the points listed above. You’ll still need to discuss money, in particular your justification for any special resources you may require. Appropriately contextualising the project within a critical framework rather than an economic one will be the most significant difference between the two types of brief. If you’re requesting funding or support for production, for an exhibition or publication, or for an artist’s residency, you must be able to convince whoever writes the cheques that you’re conversant with the subject you wish to research and that you have the ability and commitment to complete
    the project.

    Unlike a commercial brief, a self-directed brief is not a rigid plan but a more organic document, which you’ll appraise and update as you go along. This is certainly the case with the selfdirected projects you’ll propose whilst studying with the OCA.

  • Time-based audio-visual presentations

    Like books, slideshows have a very ‘linear’ narrative, even more so than the photobook. The creator is in control of the order in which viewers see images and therefore has greater control over the meanings generated.

    Victorian ‘magic lantern’ shows –  idea of projecting a photographic image onto a surface for a temporary duration rather than creating a hard copy to be exhibited

    1960s, 70s and 80s  slideshow screenings at amateur international competitive events. Specialist equipment was developed, whereby two slide projectors would be automated (in terms of duration and opacity of each slide) whilst also playing a stereo soundtrack, all controlled by a domestic cassette tape.

    Automated displays of photographs as for example web galleries are now very common. Slideshow galleries on WordPress and SmugMug, the Slideshow module in Lightroom and iPhoto, as well as Windows consumer software, make it easy to compile this type of automated slideshow quickly and easily. But these are limited – the main control being over the images themselves: which images are show in which order, manipulation of each image to vary the effect of eg colour, viewpoint and crop, sequencing to vary these effects in a meaningful way, and the content and style of any titles and text to reinforce or challenge the meaning in the image. Some software like lightroom Slideshow module allows narration, sound and/or music and mixing of photos with video.

    More considered audio-visual presentations can be both works of art in themselves, and/or more effective as a means of promoting still images. Here the creator takes more control of the relative timing of viewing of each image – some take longer and some less time. There are also different types of transition. Effects can be superimposed to change the image – zooming and panning, changing colour and focus as each image is viewed, multiple images shown at the same time.

    Software used include:

    • Adobe Photoshop
    • Adobe Premiere
    • Adobe Animate
    • Adobe After Effects

    This means that substantial numbers of images can be combined – some similar and some contrasting to enhance a narrative.

    The boundary between video and still photography is becoming increasingly blurred. As high definition video is becoming a standard feature of both consumer and professional DSLRs, and shooting video is becoming more intuitive to digital photographers, it is likely that clients will start to expect photographers to offer video as well as still images.

    YouTube and Vimeo are two places where video content and slideshows saved in a video format (.mov or .mp4) can be self-published.

    Examples

    • Urbex: Beauty in Decay
    • Chris Leslie: slideshows of ‘Disappearing Glasgow’ with photos, background music and interviews. I find these very evocative as a social documentary portrait. These are in a linked series on vimeo – start with  https://vimeo.com/29799259
    • Xavier Ribas  ‘Concrete Geographies’.  Photos of concrete blocks in Barcelona. See his website: http://www.xavierribas.com. This has inside views and links to vimeos of other books like Sanctuary – no text, one photo per spread. Sometimes a cross-over image. But the onscreen resolution is not good enough to really see the images.
    • Alessandro Rota A Neocolonialist’s diary.  Small paisley pattern cover. Coloured photos of sheets in Lusaka. Dark night streets. Lights. See his website . And vimeo of the book. https://vimeo.com/28099164
    • Foto8 Magazine has many powerful photo-only documentary stories with music.

    More video-based:

    • Magnum in Motion and the subscription-based Mediastorm have powerful documentaries that mix video (often slow-motion and photo-like) and animated or still photos with narrative voice over.
    • 1 in 8 Million (New York Times) has a video gallery with video/photo mixes linked to videos with personal stories of varied New Yorkers.
    • Duckrabbit does training as well as producing documentaries blending moving as well as still images.

    Less effective I thought were:

    For links to my own work so far see: Create a slideshow. But this needs more work – when I have less work and risk of RSI.

    Audio-visual pieces – some points to consider

    (adapted from Course Guide)

    Some of the design tips for photobooks, most notably rhythm and sequencing, are equally relevant here.

    • Rationale: What is the purpose of the slideshow? What is the main concept? Who is it for? Why do you want to present your work in a slideshow? Is a slideshow the most appropriate treatment of the work? If there’s a lot of content within the frame, will the viewer have enough time to ‘read’ the image at the given pixel dimensions?
    • Selection and Editing: Edit your work strictly.  Do all the images sit comfortably next to each other. Do any seem out of place? Can this be resolved, or should they be omitted? How long will your slideshow be? If it’s intended solely for on-line use, then it will probably need to be shorter than a piece that will be shown on a loop in a gallery.
    • Sequencing: Sequencing is paramount: consider how certain images relate to each other (graphically as well as in terms of the ‘connotations’ of an image, or the juxtaposition of images within the sequence).
    • Text: Will you use text? What will you say? Will the text complement and reinforce the images, or challenge the viewer through contrast or contradiction?What typeface and style will you use?
    • Sound: Consider the relationship between the sound and your images? Have you got relevant audio and/or textual material to accompany the images? If not, what could you look for?  Adobe Audition and Sony’s Acid Music are quite easy to use giving music loops to combine and layer to compose your own simple music tracks. Websites such as http://freemusicarchive.org  offer copyright-free audio tracks for non-commercial use.