Chugging along

untitled (Kapalua, Maui) copyright 2013, Douglas Stockdale.

It seems like I have a bunch of balls in the air at the moment, nothing final to report, just that I am moving forward and hopefully making some progress.

My Gardening for Ordinance project is on a temporary hold while I gain some confidence in asking some folks to model for me, but I am getting some traction on this front. Trouble is that after my first attempt, my subject would not sign the model release. sigh. Nevertheless some good experience, but I’m going to work on some other projects before coming back to this.

SNAPs project is coming along and now looks like two artist book projects, first will be the smaller (less expensive) while sorting out the bigger project. For the first of the two, I am into the third book dummy, each one becoming more specific and detailed as to what the artist book will look like. Still not ready to commit to the purchase of the ISBN for the title, but I researched the title to know that it does not have an ISBN attached to this specific one yet, but at the moment as a placeholder, I am calling it a SNAPfolio.

So in the meantime, trying to find all of the materials to construct this SNAPfolio has been a lot of fun. It was like a memory of a child hood treasure hunt; instead of a gang of kids going door-to-door, more of an adult version in which I had my list and drove from store-to-store looking for something that resembled what I wanted. Resulted in some nice conversations with the folks at the stores as they listened to what I was looking for and they participated in finding the specific item or offering alternatives. It became somewhat collaborative in a sense.

As I have been creating this SNAPfolio, I keep adding more and more to it, so it is more and more of an art project that appears like an artist book. I borrowed a page from Raymond Meeks, so I have developed a hardcover casing to ship (and store) this project in. I now have a second generation prototype and it looks charming.

I am  borrowing a page from Pierre Bessard, my publishing friend in Paris, and will create this as limited edition of 100 copies. The trouble is that my printing and binding cost will not as low as Bessard’s, but no matter as that aspect is a lesser issue at the moment. Nevertheless, I have been seeking alternative sources to help reduce the costs of materials, so that has also been an interesting pursuit.

This project has also been taking time away from what I usually spend on my photobook narratives, so the postings to The PhotoBook have less frequent recently.

Looking back, the current route dose seem to be a little bit erratic and a zigzag path, but that’s the fun of being an artist versus a project manager; serendipity can play a bigger role in my life.

Oh, as to the photograph above with this post, it has no bearing on anything; I saw, I photographed and as it is not related to any project, it is a case of random “seeing”.  enjoy.

Cheers!