Singular Images

February 13, 2019

Ten dollar limited edition photograph sale with book purchase!

Filed under: Art Market, Books, Ciociaria, Photobook, Photography, Projects/Series — Tags: , , , , — Doug Stockdale @ 11:24 pm

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Ciociaria Book + Print Morolo Edition copyright 2011/2012 Douglas Stockdale

I have a really special offer; $10.00 for a limited edition archival pigment photograph Morolo when you also purchase the Ciociaria book (both for $65.00); essentially my Ciociaria Morolo Book + Print Edition. Ciociaria is a hard cover book with dust jacket published by Edizioni Punctum (printed in Rome, Italy). Both the Morolo photograph and the book are a set of matching edition numbers, both signed and numbered. This sale is limited by the small number of sets still available (Edition size is 25).

Morolo photographic image size is 8-1/2″ x 5-5/8″ on a 9-1/2″ x 8″ sheet; archival pigment print, signed and numbered on the front margin, with matching signed and numbered book. The Morolo photograph is not included within the book, so this is a unique urban landscape photograph that I created while walking through the Italian hillside community of Morolo located within the Ciociaria region.

I have been selling the Ciociaria book + print set for $150.00 and recently my photographs near this size have been selling for $150.00 at my gallery. So why this special offer? First, I have been considering a new series of book + prints and this revised  price is near my intended price for the new book + print sets. Second, and perhaps most importantly, my large-format Epson printer just died. Dead. Kaput. Goner. DOA. I need a new printer, thus I need to quickly sell some photographs to buy the new printer. I think that this is a really great reason for a special book + print sale! You get a really great print and book deal and I get to start printing again.

Limited Edition Ciociaria photograph + book set; $65.00

I can provide a PayPal invoice for the photograph + book, plus I need to include shipping and if shipped within California, I will also need to include the CA sales tax; contact me: doug@douglasstockdale.com

If you prefer just the signed book the copies are available from me, photo-eye and Arcana Book of the Arts (Culver City, CA) for $55.00 each.

Ciociaria SOVRACOPERTA.indd

Signed Ciociaria book (without signed and numbered photograph): $55.00

For more information about the hard-cover book, the portfolio is on my web site, and a nice book review on The PhotoBook Journal.

If you find that that the Ciociaria photographs are really beautiful and you would prefer a much larger limited edition photograph, please let me know and we can work out something.

Morolo_Edition

Morolo (Ciociaria)

By all means, if you have any questions, message me; doug@douglasstockdale.com

Standard Sales hype (hum your favorite commercial tune while reading the following): Remember, there are only a few of these Amazing book and photograph sets remaining, so don’t wait and miss this rare opportunity. ACT NOW!

Honestly, I really do appreciate your consideration. Thank you!

Cheers,

Doug

 

February 9, 2019

Brainstorming at PhotoLA 2019

Filed under: Art Market, Photobook, Photography, Projects/Series — Tags: , , — Doug Stockdale @ 7:38 am

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Studio E. R., copyright 2018 Mark Ruwedel

Last weekend I had an opportunity to participate as a panelist for a discussion about photo books during PhotoLA 2019. A subject dear to my heart. As a result, I completed the hour and half drive up to Santa Monic for three of the four days for this event, while usually I am only good for one day. You can see a lot in one afternoon at an art fair. All in all, PhotoLA was a great meeting place for a ton of LA photographers and be inspired by lots of photography; historical, modern and contemporary.

One of the reasons that I returned to PhotoLA so often this time is the work I am doing for two mentoring clients regarding their pending book designs I am working on. I wanted to dive deep at the four book publishers and one book store who were present, specifically looking for a couple of books that I had pre-visualized for my clients. While doing so, I also came across a very elegant and relatively simple hard-cove book that inspired me. Yes, I found myself dreaming about creating a new series of self-published photobooks, perhaps similar to Editions Bessard’s Zine Collection or Nazraeli Press’s One Photo Books. Both of these publishers include a small signed print with each book. hmmmm.

So I am doing a little book brainstorming and I have already created a blank book-dummy and some preliminary design notes; enough to be able to request a ball-park quote from a book printer for the printing and binding. With the printing quote, I will find out if I am in the ball-park for what I think these should sell for and if I want to proceed. Meanwhile, I already have a project selected that I will evaluate as to which photographs I might include in the book and an idea of which one will be printed and provided as a signed photograph to include with the book. So I should be able to finish the initial book-dummy shortly.

I think that this will provide some interesting possibilities. So stay tuned!

Cheers

January 1, 2019

Holiday working on my website – Middle Ground

Filed under: Art, Art Market, Books, Middle Ground, Photobook, Photography, Projects/Series — Tags: , , , , , — Doug Stockdale @ 7:24 pm

Alternative Crossing

Alternative Crossing (Middle Ground) copyright 2017 Douglas Stockdale

This Holiday weekend I found myself working on an unexpected task; while making my end of the year posts, I wanted to link-up my various projects on my web-site. Except when I went to link up my recent artist-book project Middle Ground, this project was not on my web-site. What!!. Then it dawned on me, I was wondering what was missing when I made the recent SquareSpace transfer for my web site’s back-bone; now I know; I had not included the transfer of Middle Ground project.

I guess what I might call a Freudian-slip; spending so much time with this project recently I must have been on a bit of over-load and forgot it, OR a bit disappointed with how this book and project did not resonate as a social protest project against the Trumpian-fourth-century-barrier along the US-Mexico border (yes, think how effective the Great Wall of China was for the Chinese. Hint: it wasn’t).

So the fix is in and I now have the Middle Ground project up on my web-site; here. This will of course help a tad bit with some of my gallery and exhibition submissions that I am planning for this year ;- )

Cheers & Happy New Year!

Doug

December 18, 2018

Book workshop with Medium Festival – revised dates & special Discount available

Filed under: Art, Photobook, Projects/Series, Workshops — Tags: , , , , — Doug Stockdale @ 9:35 pm

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Guide book-dummy, 2017 copyright Douglas Stockdale

First; my Developing a Creative Photo Book workshop dates for Medium have been changed to March 23 & 24th, 2017. Thus the workshop has moved to bit later, one weekend exactly, from what I had announced last month. This should still be a wonderful spring weekend to spend in San Diego having some creative and intense fun to help you move your artist book forward. You will have a chance to spend some quality time at our destination hotel for this event: Lafayette Hotel & Swim Club in San Diego.

Second, if you act fast and register before December 25th, 2018, you can obtain a 15% discount! Okay, actually you can obtain a 15% discount for any of the four 2019 workshops, including mine, being provided by the Medium Festival, which include Susan Burnstine’s “Developing the Personal Narrative”, Brandon Thobodeaux’s “Bridging Fine Art & Commercial Photography” and scott b. davis’s “Advance Platinum/Palladium Printing”. good stuff!

As a reminder about my workshop: The goal of this workshop is to discuss each photographer’s vision, mission and objectives for the publication of a photographic project and then to gain an understanding of how these conceptual aspects translate into a book object. Fundamental to the book development process is learning aspects of the editing, sequencing of the body of photographs and in the context of a book design to shape and narrate a story. The purpose of this workshop is to provide photographers with the building blocks to move from a complex unorganized mass of images into a refined edit and subsequently sequence to create a pre-visualization of their book concept.

Registration and more information can be found here.

Let me know if you have any questions, and please take advantage of this holiday discount. Just saying….

Cheers!

 

November 26, 2018

Website Switch up to SquareSpace

Filed under: Art, Art Market, Photobook, Photography, Projects/Series, Trabuco Flats Mystery — Tags: , , , — Doug Stockdale @ 9:57 pm

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Trabuco Flats, copyright 2018 Douglas Stockdale

For those who might have followed the link to my website these past few days probably had a bit of a visual surprise when you were greeted with a brand new home page. So while I was taking some time to evaluate how I wanted to proceed with my Trabuco Flats project, I decided it was also time to put into play something that had been bothering me for a while with PhotoShelter, the back-bone host for my domain name.

As an artist, I have a lot of photographs and art work to share and I must admit that PhotoShelter did a great job of making me look pretty good. Since I also create artist books and other publications to sell, PhotoShelter was not so hot. In fact they do not have an effective way to allow you to show the books, least help with sales. Even after I called their technical support, got the sorry story. Bummer.

It’s always been part of my game plan that I would work with small photobook stores to partner with in order to sell my books, thus I did not make the sales options for my web site as a very high priority until recently. In today’s artistbook and photobook market it seems that many, if not most, small bookstores get a constant deluge of new titles. Thus I realizing to effectively sell my books, I need to have the option(s) to be able to sell directly.

Thus I used the time to evaluate some alternative sites that might be able to host my domain name, have a great ability to show photographs and products (artist books) and the commerce infrastructure to take orders. I had evaluated SquareSpace when I made the earlier decision to go with PhotoShelter but the buzzzz seemed to point to recent changes in how SquareSpace could be developed (I am NOT a IS programmer! So it has to be pretty simple). It quickly appeared to me that SquareSpace was now a good potential to check all of my boxes.

One nice thing about SquareSpace that sucks you in is there FREE 15 day offer to develop your web site and see if it seems to work for you. Wow, what a difference in bringing all of my website parts together; easy. Perhaps even the Big Easy. Also an improvement in how they manage and subsequently display photographs and art work. Still a few quirks in how SquareSpace does things, but since I have been poking a lot of blog sites, etc for my social media, I assumed that certain things could be done; so it was just a bit of a learning curve on how to do it.

I decided on the option of having a landing page that would announce something in particular and then a big ENTER to make sure you know where to proceed. This allows me to keep the focus on an event, such as my up coming workshop with Medium Festival for Developing a Creative Book that will occur in San Diego next March 23 and 24th. I then can decide where within the website you will first subsequently land, which for now is my project Trabuco Flats. So far, so good.

Thus just before Thanksgiving my web site was pretty well designed on SquareSpace, so I decided to pull the trigger and transfers my domain name from PhotoShelter. I did not upgrade to the commerce capabilities yet as I still want to make sure that all of the things were in place and learn a little bit more about their formatting tools. I also want to poke some of the other sites on SquareSpace that use the selling tools to get some ideas of what I want to implement. Not that anybody was looking to buy my artist books for Cyber Monday!

Maybe I missed a big sales opportunity this year, but there is always next year while going slow and easy at my own pace keeps my stress levels down. I need to enjoy the day.

So I put enough hyper links in this post and if you have not taken the bait yet, then check it out now.

Cheers!

Doug

November 12, 2018

10 years of photo book inspirations

Filed under: Art Market, Books, Photobook, Photography, Projects/Series — Tags: , , , , — Doug Stockdale @ 5:43 pm

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Guide to Self-Publishing an Indie Artist Book, 2017 copyright Douglas Stockdale

As many of you know, in addition to writing this photo-blog in which I discuss my photographic projects and other odds and ends, I am also the Editor of The PhotoBook Journal. I started The PhotoBook Journal (TPBJ) shortly after starting this blog back in 2008 when I noticed that there was an extremely strong response to the book reviews of the photobooks in my personal collection. At that time there was really only one other photobook review site by Jeffery Ladd, which he has since ceased contributing to. So now 10 years have passed and we just passed the 500th photobook review! That’s a big Wowzer!!

Meantime, I have continued to acquire more photobooks in my collection, as well as receive donations (aka submissions) for consideration, photobooks that either I could not afford or not sure I would acquire. I realized that one aspect that I could provide with TPBJ is to review a broad and diverse range of International photobooks to expand the potential creative consideration for artists, photographers and collectors.

In turn this diversity of books has also inspired my photographic and photobook practice. I will also admit that writing the TPBJ has forced me to think a little clearer about the intent of a photographic project. Likewise I think the editorial responsibilities have drastically improve my writing skills; no longer an engineer writing a cut and dried specification or technical report, but now thinking of how to create an informative and inspirational narrative. Wow. I think my high school English teacher would be stunned by the transformation.

Likewise, I have been able to hold some of the most inspirational and brilliantly designed and printed photobooks that have published over the past 10 years. I also think that we have also helped to launch a few photobook artist careers, as the only prerequisite for consideration on TPBJ is a well thought out and executed photobook project. Thus many, many photobooks that personally inspire me for my own book practice; the books in my collection set the bar pretty high as well as provide some very creative alternatives. This led to Ciociaria being published by Edizioni Punctum (still available), and my three self-published limited edition artist books; Pine Lake (sold out), Bluewater Shore (just a few left) and this year, Middle Ground (still available).

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Middle Ground, published 2018, copyright Douglas Stockdale

Which in turn has lead to my photobook design workshops and subsequently to mentoring other artists, photographers, and publishers as to how to move their personal or business practices forward. Such as the photobook by Christine Kaplan, On My Walk, that I provided the book design and editing which she self-published this summer. The workshops and mentoring led to the publication last year of Guide to Self-publishing an Indie Artist Book last year & which is still available ($19.95 USD plus postage; message me if you would like a copy of this or the others doug@douglasstockdale.com)

All in all, the last 10 years has been an inspirational and wonderful ride; thanks for supporting me on this interesting artistic journey!

Cheers,

Doug

November 1, 2018

Book workshop with Medium Festival of Photography

Filed under: Art Market, Books, Photobook, Projects/Series, Workshops — Tags: , , , , — Doug Stockdale @ 9:07 pm

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Guide book dummy, 2017 copyright Douglas Stockdale

I am very excited to announce that I will be providing my Photo Book Design Workshop in conjunction with the Medium Festival of Photography next March 23 & 24th (rescheduled, was 16 and 17th), 2019. This two day workshop will take place in San Diego at the Lafayette Hotel & Swim Club. A great location to be in March.

You can register now at: https://www.mediumsandiego.org/developing-a-creative-photo-book/

This two-day Workshop is an opportunity for artists and photographers currently working on or planning to start a project that will result in a book publication. Whether you plan to make book submissions to a publisher or self-publish your artist book, this workshop is meant to help you create a book that meets your vision.

The goal of this workshop is to discuss each photographer’s vision, mission and objectives for the publication of a photographic project and then to gain an understanding of how these conceptual aspects translate into a book object. Fundamental to the book development process is learning aspects of the editing, sequencing of the body of photographs and in the context of a book design to shape and narrate a story. The purpose of this workshop is to provide photographers with the building blocks to move from a complex unorganized mass of images into a refined edit and subsequently sequence to create a pre-visualization of their book concept.

I hope you can join me for a fun and intense two days learning the basics of book development and how this will help you move your project forward. Likewise, the editing and sequencing methodology you will learn is equally applicable to creating a strong review portfolio or organizing a gallery submission.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Cheers!

 

September 12, 2018

Introduction to PhotoBook Design – October LACP workshop

Filed under: Art, Art Market, Books, Photobook, Workshops — Tags: , , , , — Doug Stockdale @ 4:36 pm

Introduction to Photo Book Design with Douglas Stockdale (Two sessions)

Introduction to Photo Book Design workshop

Los Angeles Center for Photography

Next month, October 7th and 14th, I will be repeating my popular two-day workshop in conjunction with the Los Angeles Center for Photograph (LACP). This workshop focuses on the fundamental development of a book; understanding the artists intent and how that then translates into a book object in the editing, sequencing and layout of the book supported by the book’s design attributes.

The two-day goal of the workshop is for each person to leave with a first rough draft of their book dummy of their personal photographic project. I will provide both creative and practical book design options and project critiques to help those attending to move their book publication forward.

After a morning of studying limited edition artists’ books, trade books and zines, the remainder of the first morning will be spent understanding each artist/photographers publishing objectives. Subsequently I will include discussions on the elements of book design, essence of project editing, image editing and sequencing, the purpose of a physical book-dummy, concluding with a hands-on fabrication of a saddle-stitch dummy book/zine.

The second session delves further into the book dummy development and includes discussions about the business elements of (self/indie) publishing a book, critical book production elements and making a publisher submission. The remainder of the day students will continue working on the development of their dummy book as a collaborative project as well as some one-on-one time with each participant.

The feedback I have received over the years is this workshop has been critical to many artist and photographers for their publishing success; helping provide clarity on their project and providing creative book design options. So whether you are developing your very first book or your book project is one of many, I think you will find our time together to be really inspiring.

I hope you can join me for this fun and yet intensive workshop.

This workshop is being held at the LACP facilities: 1515 Wilcox Ave, Los Angeles, CA

Let me know if you have any questions,

Cheers!

 

September 10, 2018

Mystery on the Plano Trabuco – new project

Filed under: Art, Photobook, Photography, Projects/Series, Trabuco Flats Mystery — Tags: , , — Doug Stockdale @ 10:23 pm

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Suspicious circumstances, site #5, 2018 copyright Douglas Stockdale

Okay, this has been a crazy two weeks. Which has provided me with an unexpected new project with the working title of Mystery on the Plano Trabuco. So how in the heck did this all happen?

With the publication of my recent limited edition artist book, Middle Ground, I was at a bit of a cross roads as to which of the other two projects that I already had in the works to take forward. For my Memory Pods project, the plant cycle was finished for this year, so I was not concerned about creating more photographs for that project. Tara Wray had expressed an interest in this body of work for her TooTired project, so I had begun to edit Memory Pods body of work as I have not spent much time due to the publication of Middle Ground.

Meanwhile, I planned to continue poking around the local area with my cameras for the Gardening for Ordnance project. Accumulating and expanding on that project’s body of work. While poking around in the local park, I came across something that in retrospect the O.C. Sheriff’s office calls “suspicious circumstances”, but when I met with a bunch of the Sheriff officers to inspect what I found (first reported here); they stated that it looked like an old, collapsed shallow grave. Good grief! Since I was not a photo-journalist, my initial thoughts were to make some quick survey photographs and then move on.

At this same time I was writing a review of Julia Borissova’s limited edition book for The PhotoBook Journal and recalled her earlier limited edition book Dimitry, about mysterious circumstances surrounding her Russian subject and subsequent stories. hmmmm, inspiration hit; why not create something similar about what I had recently found? It was a brand new mystery to be investigated!

When I returned to check out what the Sheriff’s office did to close their case at this site and take some additional photographs, I then found another SIX sites similar to the first. Yikes! So I reported this event last weekend, here. Since then, I have completed some research about cadaver dogs that were used to sniff out the area; apparently these skilled dogs can find human burial sites that are really, really old, perhaps 200 years old. So appears that these might not be human burial graves as the reason for digging these mysterious sites. Actually that’s a bit of relief.

Nevertheless, still very much a mystery. And now I have a new project. So next to start working on an artist statement, pre-visualiztion of the new artist book design, back to take more photographs and tweaking the resulting images. I am currently posting some potential images on Instagram (@douglasstockdale) under this project name.

Cheers!

September 5, 2018

Summer of 2018 is over

Filed under: Art, Art Market, Memory pods, Photobook, Photography, Projects/Series — Doug Stockdale @ 6:38 pm

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Aging (Memory Pods project) copyright Douglas Stockdale

It is now September, summer vacation as most of us know it (as a former Midwestern that is after Labor Day), the kids are back in school and looking forward to the Fall weather. I took a short break from blogging here after the publication and exhibition of my artist book Middle Ground. So a bit of a quick recap of what has been going on for the past month and a half (no moss growing on a rolling stone).

In July I was a portfolio Reviewer for Los Angeles Center of Photography’s 2018 EXPOSURES during which one of those I spent time with was Melissa Lazuka, who has been developing some very cool artist books. Subsequently after discussing the issues of how to create a larger edition size she made a decision to create her artist books as unique books (1 of 1), but in a series utilizing the same layout, her photographs, but different ephemeral materials. And she just sold her first one shortly after I reviewed “Song of the Cicadas” on The PhotoBook Journal. It is very nice now one of my favorite photobooks for 2018. So check it out!

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Melissa Lazuka, Song of the Cicadas, copyright 2018

In early August the photobook I have been designing for Christine Kaplan, On My Walk, was published and released during a UCLA Medical event in conjunction with Teen Cancer America for their Backyard Concert series fundraiser. (Also attended this concert, which included performances by Jewel, Van Morrison, Don McLean (American Pie, a long version, of course!), Ed Sheeran, including an impromptu duet by McLean and Sheeran, and Roger Daltry). Christine was working on her book with me through the LACP Mentorship program.

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Christine Kaplan, On my Walk, copyright 2018

August was also the month that my little portable PC gave up the ghost and I made the transition back to using Mac’s again after 20+ years, opting for a 27″ iMac with most of the bells and whistles. Not a fan of the iMac bluetooth mouse, so that was switched out for a Logitech mouse which has been 100% reliable, which is more than I can say for the iMac mouse. I did lose a few things during this transition, but nice thing about using film, I just need to rescan the negatives.

Meanwhile I continued to develop my project Gardening for Ordnance while promoting my artist book Middle Ground. In the process of working on Gardening for Ordnance, I recently came across what the local O.C. Sheriff is calling a “shallow” grave. Not something I was looking for, but something that I found & reported. The Sheriff’s (about six of them showed up) stated that they will continue to investigate; don’t know who buried what and when. Also in touch with the crime desk of the local OC Register newspaper. Since I am not a photo-journalist, I will leave this to someone else to keep track of.

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O’Neill Regional Park, September 2018, copyright Douglas Stockdale

As a result of completing a book review of Tara Wray’s photobook “Too Tired for Sunshine“, I have been submitting some of my photographs from my Memory Pods project for her TooTired project on IG. My attempts to indirectly create a portrait of my mother and grandmother in the later stages of Alzheimer’s Disease during which they experience profound sadness, confusion, anger and depression appear to resonate with her readership. Thus I am returning to this body of work which I have not spent much time with this past year while working on the Middle Ground project. So expect to see a bit more from me about the Memory Pods project during the Fall.

Last, Gerhard (Gerry) Clausing and I have initiated a monthly on-line exhibition series for the Photographers Exchange, a local photographic group that Gerry and I edit the blog. He and I will take turns curating this monthly on-line exhibition (I am currently curating the Contemporary Landscape exhibition) and see how this develops as we consider what unmeet needs that we can address with this. Regretfully at the moment this is an internal event for members of the Exchange, while Gerry and I consider alternatives for this social media channel.

Cheers!

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