Trabuco Flats, 2018 copyright Douglas Stockdale
After recently making the changes to move my website operations to SquareSpace, I have been taking some time away from working (photographing) my Trabuco Flats project. Some needed reflection time. When I find myself unsure of how a project should look (revisualization), I think it is best to slow down. I have been doing some journaling about this project and see how it reads. Fictional, semi-fictional or a bit documentary? At the moment, I am moving from the entirely fictional to more of the semi-fictional and not sure that this will become a documentary type narrative. Perhaps a bit like the Pine Lake and Bluewater Shore projects.
The photograph in this post was made earlier this year and I now think might become part of this project (from another project in the same vicinity). Interestingly I had photographed this same location earlier in the day without any shadows and then later when I observed the shadows, this aspect seemed to add another mysterious dimension to this composition. So I made another series of exposures and now happy that I did.
As you can see, this is a “straight” color image and in line with this earlier post about the use of straight black & white, color or highly manipulated images. I think I am getting a handle on how all of these different visual styles might mash-up in my book design which will support my narrative concept. Also means that I am getting closer to the book development phase of creating the first version of my book dummy (marquette).
I also need to get my printer fixed (again) as well as it’s time to upgrade my color management system. More about that shortly.
I just finished my end-of-the-year big task selecting the “Interesting Artist and Photo Books for 2018” for The PhotoBook Journal. The 12 books were just announced this past weekend, so I spent a bunch of the last couple of days promoting it on the various social media channels. Meanwhile we still need to continue reviewing photobooks. This year I have three more book reviewers joining the TPBJ, so a bit of my time coaching them on how we have been doing the book review process.
Meanwhile, it is time to enjoy the holidays and I will be discussing my Holiday Christmas card very soon.
Cheers!
Singular Images 