Category: Photo Books

Aug 12

More than Photography book published!

eBook: So Much More than Photography
eBook details:
So Much More than Photography
by Nitsa
PDF, 174 pages.
Special pre-release price: $10

So Much More than Photography is a book of ideas and inspiration for creative and experimental photography.

The first part of the book encourages photographing without following the rules while at the same time exploring new methods and ideas to approach photography.
The second part of the book shares numerous ways to present your photographs artistically such as Image transfers, texture layers, mixed media photography and so on. You will see how easy it is to take your ordinary photos to the next level and you don’t even have to attend an art school or have any special skills to utilize these creative techniques.
The third section includes an article about Print on Demand, selected entries from my photography blog, and final thoughts.

All the processes shared in the book are the product of many experiments, endless trial and errors, I made in the last couple of years. I hope you will find these techniques easy to do and most of all they will inspire you to create your own photo-art work.


So Much More than Photography [PDF]
PRICE: $10


Thank you for your support!

BOOK CONTENTS

Part one: Why you don’t need to follow the rules – Intro to non.photorapy – no rules – The science (art?) of photography – Abandoning the rules – Street photography – Accidental Work – Unplanned and unstaged photography -The challenges of street photography – Photographing on the move – Constructing a street photograph – Alternatives in street photography – Photographing in the rain – Shooting in the fog – Sky, sunset & sunrise
Photographing at night – Long exposure – Flash effects – Motion panning – Zoom lens effect – Shoot different cameras
Part two: Unconventional and creative photography techniques – The cameras we use – Polaroid – Holga – Other toy cameras – expensive cheap cameras – Diana – Lubitel 166 – Holgaroid – Classic cameras – Best camera for street photography – Film and scanning techniques – Cross processing – Tungsten film – Time Zero film – Multiple exposures – Expired and damaged film – Extreme and creative scanning – The negative as a frame – Computer techniques – Canvas background layer – Aging a color photo with coffee – Adding texture to a photo – Make your own textures – Texture from a mixed media collage – Working with textures and layers – Fake HDR – Positive/negative composite – Inkjet transfer – Basic image transfer (inkjet) – Perfect photo transfers – Transferring with transparencies – Xerox (photocopy) image transfer – Test transfer – Packing tape transfer – Paint transfer – Mixed media transfer – Transfer to mirror or ceramic tile – Gel Layer transfer – Aluminum foil transfer -Transfer to Polaroid – Paint a transfer – More transfer ideas – Hand coloring and painting photos. – Modified negative – Distressed prints – Mixed media and journaling – Slicing and reassembling a photo – Print on Demand – Which Print on Demand should I choose? – Standard books POD (Lulu & CreateSpace) – Publishing a Photo book – Lulu Studio – Blurb BookSmart – Publishing on Amazon – Marketing your book – Selling at your local bookstore – Online Marketing – Website/Blog – Search Engine Optimization – Join an Online Network – Link exchange – Book review – Social Networks – RSS feed – Marketing services – Paid advertisement – Document sharing services – Tools you can use – Photo editing: Paintshop Pro – FTP Client: FileZilla – Blog: WordPress

Preview selected pages from the book here

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Dec 09

Publishing a book with Blurb print on demand (review and also blurb vs. Lulu)

Now that I’m holding in my hands a book that was printed with Blurb I have to say I’m undeniably impressed!
The book I put together using BookSmart which is Blurb’s bookmaking software, is titled
Chasing George Washington – Road trip in Virginia & Pennsylvania
I created the book for personal purpose and also to test blurb and so I’m not planning on selling it.
Working in BookSmart was quite fun and simple and maybe the main advantage of this software is that it leaves lots of room for creativity. It lets you layer backgrounds, images and text, much like inDesign.
Once the book is ready it can be uploaded to Blurb from within BookSmart. After I ordered a copy I waited 4 days until the book was printed and ground shipping took another week or so.
The price of the book was quite reasonable; a Standard Landscape 10×8 inches premium printing Hardcover ImageWrap 80 pages is priced at $43.95.
The book is printed on a premium paper and the print quality is excellent! As I mentioned, I’m very much impressed with the whole process and mainly with the high quality of the actual printed book.
And finally as a bonus I discovered BookSmart makes it possible to create a pdf file from the file/print menu (printing as a pdf using a pdf writer such as CutePdf) and though the pdf file has the blurb watermark on it, it is certainly a plus.

The Conclusion:
If I had to choose between Blurb and Lulu then my choice will depend on my objective.
I would definitely choose Lulu (and/or CreateSpace) for publishing a standard book but for a coffee table/portfolio type of book I will absolutely go with Blurb;
1) Blurb’s BookSmart software permits more room for creative design and layout which is rather limited with Lulu Studio.
2) Another bonus point Blurb gets over Lulu Photo Book is the price: the same book mentioned above will be prices at $54.99 with Lulu (instead of $43.95 with Blurb) even though it will actually have somewhat a smaller size (9X7 at Lulu’s instead of 10X8 with Blurb)
3) The ability to create a pdf file with BookSmart is a nice feature.

Related:
Publishing a book with Lulu Studio
What Print on Demand should you choose?
Print on Demand photo books / part one
Print on Demand books / part two
The process of writing a book – part one
The process of writing a book – part two

blurb booksmart

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Oct 29

Publishing a book with Lulu Studio

Totally L.A., the book I published with Lulu Studio Photobook, had arrived yesterday in the mail. How exciting!
It’s a 9×7 Landscape, casewrap hardcover binding photo book/portfolio printed on #100 white silk stock paper.
In the book I arranged some 80 color images plainly and genuinely depicting Los Angeles, or at least genuinely as I see it. (I say it because in the past I got email from someone who claimed the Los Angeles I was portraying in my photographs is far from being the real L.A. since I did not actually photograph in South Central or any other such bad neighborhoods. This is true; I only took some few pictures at the fringes of these areas. But sadly I stay away from these lovely districts and so I’ve never had the good fortune to take pictures documenting the life and activity of the numerous gangs in the area. but like I always say, L.A., like some other big cities, has many faces and so the Real L.A. is always something personal based on one’s experience) Now back to the book:
I find the book to be similar to what I’ve designed on the screen using Lulu Studio. The cover is in full color and looks quite appealing. The interior paper is premium quality and the printing is finest quality, vivid and just superior to any book I’ve published in the past.
However, the one thing I don’t like about this book is the PRICE.
I think compared with bookstore prices a small coffee table such as this one should not cost more than $25.00.
This is probably the main downfall of Print on Demand.

Totally L.A. photo book Totally L.A. photo book Totally L.A. photo book

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Oct 19

self publishing a photo book

This weekend I published a photo book using Lulu Studio Photo Book.
The main difference between this book and the previous books I published with Lulu is that in the past I used their standard method for publishing books by creating my own PDF file and uploading it to Lulu once the book was ready to be published.
The standard printing is a good solution if you want to create a book that is NOT meant to be a portfolio of your work, as the paper they use for this type of book is 80# matte white text stock. This paper is just fine for many types of books including a photography book (i.e. a book about photography, techniques, cameras and such.)
It is a perfectly good plan to use their standard publishing method for a photography book mainly because the price for this type of book can be kept low even if your book includes something like 150 pages.
However, this is not a good solution if you want to publish a Photo book (i.e. showcasing your wonderful photographs).
In order to publish a premium portfolio you will want to print it on a higher quality paper.
Lulu can print your Photo book on what they describe as a 100# “silk coat” finish paper; OK, I’m not sure what kind of paper it is but it is presumably heavier paper that is more suitable for printing photographs.
Setting up the book with Lulu Studio was quite simple and in fact it took me just about a couple of hours to create the book. (wow!)
So this is how it works: you begin by choosing the size and a theme for your book, you then upload your photos, and finally you drag and drop your images into a nice selection of page templates.
You then add some text and voilà you’re done! Your book is ready to be published.
You will probably want to limit the number of pages as the book’s price starts at $15 for a 9X7 20 pages landscape and with .50 for any additional page after that.

The book I published is called Totally L.A. and it includes some distinctive color images of Los Angeles. I am going to offer the book for sale on my Los Angeles website; I suppose it will make a nice gift for someone during the upcoming holidays.
I have ordered the book myself so I can examine its quality first hand; obviously I’ll let you know the outcome once I get the book.
Next, I am going to try out publishing other quality photo books using Blurb and maybe some other similar print on demand services.

Los Angeles photo book

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Sep 10

My next bestseller

I’m in a process of putting together ideas and plans, much like a blueprint, for my next book.
The book will include some thoughts about street photography and many of the techniques I use in photography; some that are featured in my last book (I am not an artist) and a bunch of new ones.
If there is something you want to see in the book, if there is a technique you think needs further explanation or if you have any other suggestion, I would love to here from you.
You can leave a comment here or if you want it to be private you can contact me directly.

Btw, You will find most of the techniques I use featured in this blog, here to the right under “Categories”. A list of the chapters and techniques in my last book is available on this page (on the right).

rain in Venice Beach.  2005.

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May 13

What Print on Demand should you choose?

When it comes to Print on Demand one of the first questions the future-bestseller must answer is; which Print on Demand service is the right one for them?
In the last few years the number of POD services grew a lot which is great as it created a larger spectrum of choices but it is also confusing because it created a larger spectrum of choices.
So basically your first task is to scan through these services, see what they offer, read reviews, and choose the right one for you. Essentially conduct your own little research.
It is very much recommended that you choose your publisher before even beginning laying out your book because you want to make sure you are designing your book according to their requirements.

Some of the POD services, like Booksurge , Xlibris and others, require that you to purchase some kind of a publishing package from them, basic package starts at $799 at Booksurge, I’m not really sure what’s the point of it, but whatever, I’m sure it somehow works for someone.

Other POD services, like Blurb and mypublisher require that you design your book using their desktop application which I find to be quite limiting since all your design work is confined within a file that can only be used with their publishing services.
Not such a good idea.

This leaves us pretty much with Lulu and CreateSpace.
Both services let you create your own PDF, DOC, RTF etc, and then upload your content to their server. Both don’t charge you anything upfront and they print your books once they are purchased. You keep your share of the loot and everybody is happy.

There are two main differences between these two:
1) Lulu offers to sell your book as a download which makes your book available for just about everyone because the price of a download can be kept low. For example, my own bestseller,
No Rules Streets Photography is sold as a download 4 times more than its print version. CreateSpace doesn’t offer a download version.
2) When you publish your book with CreateSpace your book is automatically assigned an ISBN number and is published on Amazon and as a part of the service it also includes the “Look inside” the book feature. Lulu offers an ISBN number and the Amazon promotion only if you purchase their Distribution package which costs around a $100, takes forever to establish and you need to do some work, like adding the “look inside” feature on your own (which btw, a pain in the neck!)

OK, so the Grand question now is which one should you choose?
And the answer is….both!
Yes, actually, why not? Since both of them accept a PDF file, with just a little bit of adjustment your file will work just fine with both of them.
This way you get the benefit of offering your book in a download edition while also enjoying the exposure (and sales) through Amazon without any further expense or effort on your part.
And this should never be an under-rated quality.

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Apr 02

Read this or else!

The following is a commentary I wrote in the last part of my book I am not an artist.
I think everybody should read it, not because I wrote it, but because there are a lot of people who just don’t know how good they are and/or they let fear and criticism stop them from doing things they really enjoy and wish to do.
So just in case you didn’t buy or download my book, here it is.  
I know it’s a little long but I hope you will be able to read through before falling asleep.
The text, by the way, was written by me but edited by Ryan, my favorite editor.

And finally some final thoughts

So if you actually read through this book page by page, it ought to be apparent to you by now that all methods, practices, and suggestions presented here are simple and can be easily done, even by someone who considers themselves artistically challenged, maybe someone just like you.
It’s true that often people who see my work claim “you are a true artist!” but I know they are wrong; I am not an artist. What I am is an imaginative (Ok a dreamer) (but always resourceful) person whose brain does not stop coming up with ideas, sometimes just weird or impractical, but always pure fun.
And this is what it’s all about: F-U-N
In the first few years I just took pictures, for my pleasure no doubt, but also mainly because I felt like I HAD to. I tried photographing simultaneously to the energetic pace of the streets. It meant photographing while on the move without paying too much attention to the common rules of photography (you can read all about it in my previous book: No Rules Street Photography).
This has not changed much.

However, as I entered my fifth year of taking streets and city pictures, I became weary and even, yes, well, bored.
Not all the time though; when I traveled to new places it was great and exciting and I took pictures like there is no tomorrow. But around home things just did not feel so thrilling anymore. And even though I was slowly loosing interest, quitting photography was never an option. Instead I began looking for new (and possibly more stimulating) ways of taking pictures. I went to bookstores looking for the right book (didn’t find any). I visited many photography sites in search for new ideas. At my lowest I even read through a few discussions on a couple of photography forums (yes, those places where people sign up to complain about various obstacles in their fascinating life.)
But the solution, as so often happens, hit me in an entirely unexpected place.
It happened while standing in line at our local drugstore.
It’s actually quite simple: while standing in line, I noticed they were selling Polaroid cameras over there.
“That is it!” I said to myself, “New and fun cameras! This is exactly what I was looking for.”
Obviously, I bought the Polaroid, and it did not take long before I began shooting medium format film in toy cameras and hunt second hand stores and garage sales for classic cameras.
While shooting toy and classic cameras I realized the final photo does not have to be at all perfect, and I began looking for new ways to present my photos in non-traditional ways.

One mistake people often do is they think that just because they have no known artistic ability they cannot approach their work in an artistic manner.
In fact, I believe the fact I have no artistic education whatsoever, along with the sad reality I cannot draw, paint, sculpt, or even make a straight line, provided me with the freedom to experiment with non-standard and unusual (not to say bizarre) approaches to my photo presentation.

So, that’s all I have to say. Don’t be afraid to explore, experiment, fail, and discover, no matter what others (or even you), might say about your limited abilities.
It’s about time to toss away and forget about the memory of your sixth grade art teacher and her opinions about what is good art.
Find your own style. In fact, you don’t even have to precisely follow any of the methods presented in this book but you can use them to inspire and jumpstart your creative thought to develop your own unique direction.
Sometimes people show me images they processed that were inspired by one of my techniques; however, if I can be blunt here, what they come up with has little similarity to what I do, and that’s the beauty of it. Whatever you make will be a one–of-a-kind creation based on your own unique experiences and viewpoint.

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Jan 19

The process of writing a book – part two

Because my books are essentially photography books, I usually like to create pages in my journal to choose the layout and see how the photos are going to work with the text. I get a really nice sketch notebook with heavy pages at a similar size of the book I’m working on. I then print out the photos place them in the journal and add the text. Its much better than seeing the pages on the screen as it gives me an actual feel for the layout.
I use Adobe InDesign to create the book. This program gives me total freedom to design and arrange the book any way I wish and work on each individual chapter at a time. Once the book is done I convert it to PDF which is usually the preferred format by the print on demand publishers.
Lulu is, for the most part, my preferred print on demand, especially since they let people purchase my books in a download format. These downloads are priced so reasonably and make my books accessible to just anybody. Though I was quite hesitant at first to sell photography books in a download version, a large number of my books were purchased in a download format instead of print since I made this option available around a year or so ago.
At the same time of publishing the book with Lulu I also upload and publish my book through CreateSpace. The main reason is that they assign an ISBN number and list the book on Amazon within a week.
Amazon is not a bad place to sell your book.

The next step in the process is sitting back and enjoying all the praise :)

Grand Central Station, NYC

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Jan 17

The process of writing a book – part one

Every once in a while I get questions about the process of writing a book, so I thought I’d share with you the typical path I take when I write my books.
Typically the idea for a book comes out of nowhere when I’m in the shower or riding my bike and such activities that free the brain, but really the ideas and plans do come from somewhere. Usually the idea for a book comes after some time of practicing some method or another as well as writing and sharing thoughts. Eventually there’s a need to gather all this data, the methods, the ideas and photos into one place, and what’s better than putting them all together in a book?
The second step for me is choosing a working title which can obviously change as the book progresses. But the reason I always want to choose a title is that I have a general direction for the book.
At this point I’ll usually look around the net, searching for other related books. I just don’t want to write a book that’s already have been written. Duh!
Once the reason for the existence of this book is established I draw the general outline of the book and make a list of the topics I’m going to write about. Something like a temporary index. However, I do sometimes write without planning the topics ahead and I just go along with the flow of ideas. That works out just fine too.

To be continued in the next post…

book index page

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Jul 14

Is Amazon price gouging or do people enjoy complaining about big companies?

One of the reasons I like selling my books on Amazon is that Amazon puts them on sale, which obviously makes them more attractive to the potential buyer, but also because it makes my books’ prices more reasonable.
Over at Lulu, on the other hand, the prices are fixes. Sure, I can change these prices any time I feel like it, but I’m limited to the basic price set by Lulu.
So now you can find my book No Rules Street Photography on Amazon for $33.08 (while it’s $45.95 on Lulu) and I’m even happier with the price of my book
I am Not an Artist – $21.12
trust me, its quite a bargain! :)

****************************

Meanwhile I discovered some people take offence in Amazon constantly changing book prices. (try searching “Amazon price gouging” in Google)
Apparently Amazon uses a mysterious variable to control and adjust book prices. I’m not quite sure where the problem is. Dynamic pricing is often a good practice for the consumer and at times will give us the opportunity for a really good deal. As it is, Amazon’s book prices are often the lowest around, not to mention the frequent convenience of purchasing a used copy for a really great bargain. And by the way, most of the time, the changes in prices are between a few cents to a couple of dollars.
boo hoo.

I am not an artist: unconventional and creative photography

A couple of pages from my book I am not an artist: unconventional and creative photography

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