The Process of Making the Book, Step 1

There are many ways to create a book. Since I am a very visually-oriented person, I like to work with printed thumbnails of my images to organize my pages.
I start with printing out all the good images that I want to consider for inclusion in a project. Since this was a special book, covering all my best works, I had to look at over 1000 images and then try to narrow it down to about 300 to begin. I printed out thumbnails of those images and sorted them according to season and content.


Here you can see the beginning of the sorting process. I'm also using my other books to compare images that I have already published. Whenever possible, I will use images not previously published... but sometimes, the best shot is the one that has already been chosen for a previous book.



Here I have begun organizing the framework for the Faerie Houses segment. Using the thumbnails allows me to see how the pages flow from one to the next and also how images look next to each other when you open up the book.

I arrange each "chapter" this way. I have 8 "chapters" ; Each season has two sub-chapters- one for Faerie Houses, one for my Eartherial sculptures.

However, each "chapter" was far too large. Had I published to book with every image I wanted to use, the book would have been over 250 pages long! Sounds nice, but it would have been far too expensive. So then I had to do the very painful final cut selections.

Here you can see the 8 "final" chapters with the images I really want to use. This book would be 116 pages if nothing changes. But this is just a first step. Now I have to go to all my files and find these particular images and make certain that they are indeed the very best images of each sculpture. I also have to make certain that the horizontal and vertical images are the best options for the sculptures that have been selected.

So there you have a peek at the process of creating this next book.

Stay tuned for more news soon and don't forget to tell your friends about this project! We still need to raise just over 2K in the next 3 weeks. We are very close but we still have to make sure we get there!

Thanks Everyone!!