Singular Images

November 1, 2018

Book workshop with Medium Festival of Photography

Filed under: Art Market, Books, Photobook, Projects/Series, Workshops — Tags: , , , , — Douglas 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: , , , , — Douglas 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!

 

October 10, 2017

Intro to Photo Book Design workshop outline – Third Edition pending

Filed under: Art Market, Photography, Projects/Series, Workshops — Tags: , — Douglas Stockdale @ 11:45 pm

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Red lines, Workshop outline, Second Edition, 2017 Douglas Stockdale

As I stated in an earlier post, in conjunction with the current workshop class, we self-published the second edition of the Workshop outline. I had really thought that this outline text was pretty well nailed-down. Alas, due to the eagle eyes of my workshop participants, Jocelyn Young, Christine Kaplan, Sarah Rooney, Alan Jacknow, Jane Szabo and Yulia Morris, I now foresee a third edition on the horizon now. Continuous Improvement!

This also underlines one of my recommendations, that regretfully waiting until the last minute to print the second edition, I did not take myself. We need another set of eyes to edit almost any text that we want to include in a self-published book. Jocelyn made a great point, although she found most of the text that needs correcting, she has issues with editing her own work. We all have this bad habit of reading what we want to see, not seeing the actual words used. Spell check can help with most items, but if I want to discuss a book launch, but typing in a book lunch is something that will not get flagged. Same for grammar.

A really big thank you for my new text editorial team! Only wish I had caught most of these before using it for the workshop. So with these fixes really to be implemented, I think it’s going to be a good idea that I have someone proof read the changes I make. Which also means not waiting until the day before to print the third edition. One of these days I am going to be looking pretty smart.

Next up is the Marketing Your Photo Book workshop in conjunction with LACP at the end of this month. I don’t think I will have a similar outline to self-publish, but highly suspect that I will have another interesting outline for the workshop participants (yes, a bit of surprise). This one-day session will greatly expand on the one-hour I spent on this during this Photo Book Design workshop. Should be another fun and practical experience.

Cheers!

Doug

 

 

October 3, 2017

Intro to Photo Book Design workshop outline – Second Edition self-published

Filed under: Art Market, Photography, Projects/Series, Workshops — Tags: , , , — Douglas Stockdale @ 10:01 pm

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Introduction to Photo Book Design workshop outline, 2017 Copyright Douglas Stockdale

In the middle of last month I wrote about updating my workshop outline for Introduction to Photo Book Design that I lead for LACP. Thus this last weekend, with the help of the workshop class, we self-published the second Edition of this awesome course outline. As expected, the workshop members enjoyed the experience and this little self-publishing task reduced a little bit the self-publishing mystery.

This Edition was of course another huge undertaking; one stiff cover with three folded sheets, thus 12 pages for the course outline. Then using the long-reach stapler (home-studio book binding equipment), each participant bound their own book. The Edition size is a whooping 18 copies. These will be signed and numbered on the last day of the workshop this coming weekend. Okay, perhaps a bit tongue-in-cheek with a tiny presidential style over-statement.

One thing I had an opportunity to play with is the double-sided matte inkjet paper that is sold at Staples but made in Germany. They did not have any of the Epson double-side presentation matte in stock and having waited to the last moment to buy this, I had to improvise. This double sided paper is pretty decent, probably with a little more optical whitener, nevertheless printed nice. I can see where I am doing some experimental photo proofs, using this paper may be just fine versus using the Epson presentation matte as well as save a few bucks.

Biggest headache for the day was trying to get the double sided ink jet paper to feed through my Epson desktop printer/copier (Workforce WF-7620). The Staples paper weight of 170 g/m2 is only slightly heavier than the Epson’s 165 g/m2, so not sure what the deal was. I was using my Epson 4800 to print the image on the front outside cover and then the Epson desktop to print the copy. So I had to revert back to using the Epson 4800 to print the cover’s inside and outside copy, but even then the paper was a bit touchy going through the Epson printer three times. I now have a work around to run the paper through twice, so that should help when preparing for the next workshop.

I have found a couple of typos in the second edition, so I will see if this little self-published booklet evolves into a third edition. Ought to be making the 12 copies of the first edition all that more valuable!

Having developed the course outline earlier this year, then as editor/proof-reader for Eanne’s Self-publishing Guide, all of which came together when I wrote my Guide to Self-Publishing an Indie Artist Book. My Guide appears to be on target for release at Medium in San Diego at the end of this month.

Cheers!

 

October 2, 2017

L.A. Street photography last weekend

Filed under: Photography, Workshops — Tags: , , — Douglas Stockdale @ 11:14 pm

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Los Angeles street graffiti 2017 copyright Douglas Stockdale 

While in Los Angeles this weekend to lead my Intro to Photo Book Design workshop at LACP, I thought it pure serendipity that some street graffiti of a shadowy book reader would be right in my pathway. Especially after I had posting a couple of photographs on Instagram of some book readers I had come across while roaming one of the SoCal ocean beaches. I took this street-art as a really good omen.

Below are some urban landscape photographs made this same day. While I am not sure that I am a street photographer, it sure is starting to appear from my photographs that I may indeed have that inclination. So while thinking about this, I am also starting to think that my photo book Ciociaria may have a healthy part of street photography as one of it’s main ingredients, up to now I have calling a photo-documentary. Also guessing there is a lot of overlap between photo-documentary that comes about due to street photography. hmmmmm.

Cheers!

Doug

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April 24, 2017

Two more photo book workshops with LACP

Filed under: Art Market, Books, Photography, Projects/Series, Workshops — Tags: , , — Douglas Stockdale @ 9:33 pm

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Copyright 2016/7 Douglas Stockdale

Oh wow, as if things were not crazy enough last week trying to finish enough of the edition of Bluewater Shore for the book launch at Photo Independent that LACP came back at me to schedule another Introduction to Photo Book Design workshop for next Fall (see below) and follow up on my idea for a one-day book marketing workshop. More about the Photo Independent book launch in the next couple of days as I want to get word of the workshops out as there is a limited time discount available.

Thus I am very excited to announce that I will be providing two more photobook workshops in partnership with LACP (Los Angeles Center for Photography) at their Los Angeles facilities later this year. Both have a 20% early-bird sign up until May 26th.

Marketing Your Photo Book – This is a one-day workshop being held on Saturday, July 22nd. This workshop is is intended for photographers who are preparing to publish their work in book form, whether self-publishing or working with an established book publisher, and will provide creative and practical approaches to marketing their photo book.

The morning will be spent understanding your publishing objectives and how that translates to a marketing plan. This will include discussing the basic elements of a marketing plan; what is being published and sold, who might purchase it, where to sell it, how to price it and how and when to promote it. Issues to be discussed include; how soon to start working on a plan, book economics and buyers price points, buy or create a mailing list, selling self-published books, and do’s and don’ts of using social media and web sites. During the workshop, I am planning a series of breakout sessions to enable development of each person’s specific marketing plan for their book.

Introduction to Photo Book Design – This Fall (October 1 and 8th), I will be repeating my popular (in talking to folks at Photo Independent the workshop reviews coming back to LACP were very, very good!) two-day workshop that focuses on the development of each person’s book dummy for their personal photographic project and provides both creative and practical book design options.

After a morning of studying limited edition artists’ books, trade books and zines, the remainder of the first session will be spent understanding students’ publishing objectives and how that translates to a book object. This will include time discussing the elements of book design and the purpose of a book-dummy, concluding with a hands-on fabrication of a saddle-stitch dummy book/zine. The second session delves into the business elements of (self) publishing a book and photo book production. The remainder of the day students will continue working on the development of their dummy book as a collaborative project.

I hope you can join me as these are intense, yet fun, workshops.

The workshops are being held at the LACP facilities: 1515 Wilcox Ave, Los Angeles, CA

Let me know if you have any questions,

Cheers!

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