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Print: $5.17 Download: FREE An Antidote To Negative Press
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Artemis Meereis's Blog
2008 Dec 15 ‘ Positive Youth: An Antidote to Negative Press’ by Artemis MeereisThe task of publishing my photographs as a photo book has been a wholly satisfying experience, and knowing that I have gained such worthwhile skills and knowledge on the subject of self-publishing is all the more rewarding. The process of learning how to use the Indesign software has proved invaluable, as finally understanding the potential such a programme holds brought to light a whole array of possibilities for future projects, both personal and academic. On receipt of my final, printed book I felt a sense of relief to have accomplished exactly what I set out to do. The images used, as the title of the book suggests, aim to instil an optimistic view of young people today, as opposed to the floods of negative press in circulation. This way of displaying the images, almost as a photo album, I feel has greatly enhanced the impact they have. It is a small, yet upbeat publication that flows easily from image to image. I feel it benefits from becoming a book, rather than just a collection of static portraits, and could easily be passed around, or even inspire other personal recreations within ‘youth culture’. I am also completely happy to offer a free PDF of my book, as I feel this fits perfectly with the theme of the book itself and is also a good way to let myself be known within the 'Long Tail'of publishing. With the rise of online self-publishing organisations such as lulu.com, as well as the various social networking sites, the opportunity for individuals such as myself to produce and market work has proved that it can be a lucrative and worthwhile objective. As the example of ‘The Long Tail’ shows, there is a seemingly endless amount of ‘niche markets’ to be catered for, and indeed scope for the creation of new niches to market to. For budding professionals I can imagine no better way to encourage creative and innovative works that will make a welcome change from the banality of the mainstream. Aware of the fact that I am now so easily a part of the Long Tail by producing my own publication, I am sure that it can do nothing but persuade me to utilise the skills I have learned to further a career in photography without feeling as though there are as many daunting obstacles to overcome. I can imagine how much this could significantly change the global market, making self-publication a worthy opponent to traditional publishing processes. All I hope is that the ‘tail’ gets longer, so that there is always a fresh supply of things to inspire our generation and others to come.    2008 Oct 20 Artemis Meereis 2615271 Photobook proposal (revised 04/11/08) The photographs I intend to publish are the result of a study I conducted into modern youth culture, whereby I wanted to create positive images of young people in response to the countless negative media portrayals that I came across so easily whilst conducting my research. I hope to create a book that reflects the optimistic nature of the pictures, without it being overly complicated. By complicated I mean; without superfluous design details and text accompanying the images. The images already contain text of their own, in the form of a positive self description which I asked my subjects to come up with before I photographed them. The only other text that I feel may be necessary is a brief description of the context they relate to, which I will place at the end of the book. By placing this text after the photographs, I hope to encourage the reader to come up with their own ideas, rather than be told what to look for or form any preconceptions or expectations. By including a brief explanation, however, I hope to affirm the idea and motive behind the images. Whilst researching the ‘photo-book’, I realised that I much prefer the simpler method of presentation. Although different design layouts can be interesting, or aesthetically pleasing, I feel it is not something necessarily needed to make sure the images have maximum impact, at least not with my own photography in this instance. As I have said, I feel that the images should be allowed to stand alone on the page without the need for individual explanation. I will present each image in the same way, and I want the pictures to fill the page completely, i.e. at full bleed, at roughly 6x9’’ format, with a saddle stitch bind for the 23 pages. This will strengthen the portrait style with which the images adhere to, as well as making sure no detail is missed whilst viewing. Therefore, the flow of the book as the pages are turned should have a relatively uniform feel to it, almost like a photo album. Any blank spaces, i.e. the back of each page, I will leave ‘blank’ and white. My book will use the conventional book format, in the sense that it is not making any obvious comment on the format itself, rather using it to its full potential to present the images as though it was a photo album. I want the pages to be filled with the images, so there is little ‘book’ on show whilst viewing. This links in with the idea of the narrative structure of the book. There is no obvious narrative, as the pictures are not displayed in any order, e.g. alphabetical, chronological, etc. It is, however, self reflexive in the sense that it is using a conventional book format in the style of photo-album and therefore becoming an ‘object’. Organisation of the pictures will be in the group format, as they all have a common denominator, but do not need to be read in a particular order, which also relates to the ‘movement’ of the book, making it so that the reader may look through the images without feeling as though they need to be viewing them in a particular order. It is but a ‘collection’ of pictures relating to the same theme. I will of course include my thanks to my subjects for their participation, as well as the usual authorship and publishing details: All photography and text produced by Artemis Meereis Publisher: Artemis Meereis, c/o LSBU BA (Hons) Digital Photography Copyright: © 2008 Artemis Meereis Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Online store: stores.lulu.com/artemismeereis The font for the text will be ‘Georgia’, as it is easy to read and looks neat. The title will use the ‘loki cola’ font, mainly because it is a decorative font that I feel looks effective alongside the handwriting within the pictures. To reiterate, my approach to this publication will be simple, or, as the saying goes, less is more.             2008 Oct 06 Artemis Meereis PHOTOBOOK ANAYLSIS Author: Various/ Dazed & Confused Title: 24 hours Date: 2000 Publisher: Vision On Publishing / Dazed & Confused Location: London ISBN: 19033990x0 This book is a compilation of various different artists’ photography, in response to a commercial brief for a competition run by Nescafe and Dazed & Confused magazine. There are two immediately apparent themes, being; coffee, and day-to-day living. The pictures are organised in a group format, because although they have a common denominator (as mentioned above; coffee, daily life) they are not organised to be looked at in any particular order. There is no story, so to speak, that the pictures tell by way of sequencing. This book does not seem to utilise neither ‘picture transmutation’, nor ‘theme as variation’, each page has a photograph by a different artist, displaying their own interpretation of the brief given as part of the competition they entered. Each photograph is a ‘story’ on its own, and does not need the preceding images to aid understanding of its meaning. There is an exception, however. One of the artists has chosen to display three photographs together on one page, which displays picture transmutation, in the cinematic transition sense – the same picture, with a slight difference in each image alluding to a mini story. The graphic layout of the book is varied throughout, as I shall explain in terms of the four levels of composition, as explained by Keith Smith in ‘Structure of the Visual Book’. Firstly, the individual pages of the book do not set out the pictures in the conventional ‘one picture to one page’ (1:1) format, as we see in many photobooks. ‘The page need not be confined to one picture, and a picture need not be composed by one page.’ (K.Smith, 2005 pg.330) Some photographs are displayed in the centre of the page with large white borders, and some are displayed at full bleed (covering the page completely). (see attachments) There are also examples of the latter, but with one large white border to the edge of the image, on the edge of the page, not in the fold. (see attachments) Other photographs are presented over a double page, but in a less conventional way, i.e. spread over two pages, but leaving large white borders, at both the left and right sides of the image, or to just one side/page. (In this case I would describe this as more of a ‘spill over’ than a double spread.) (see attachments) So therefore the page layouts of the book are not limited by conventional methods of display, but instead play with the unconventional. The flow, or movement, of the book as the pages are turned is somewhat fragmented as a result of the single page/double page layout. This reflects the lack of narrative, as the images are all presented differently from each other, it strengthens the individual messages and interpretations portrayed by each artist. The photographs are not interdependent on each other, and this conveys different ideas on how to describe the book as a whole. This is most certainly a photobook, but it has an air of an artists’ book, mainly because it shies away from convention and plays with the traditional book format. Furthermore, there is also no text to accompany each image, (unless there is already text within the photographs) only a brief couple of paragraphs at the beginning of the book to explain the aims of the book and the photographs themselves, namely the use of coffee and everyday circumstances. The only other text within the book is in the form of the colophon, at the end of the book. This includes all the usual copyright information and credits of the publisher and place of printing, credit to the photographers, and various thanks and acknowledgements of other parties involved in the production of the book. I would say that this is the only truly conventional aspect to the book. links you might enjoy: http://www.rankin.co.uk/ http://www.dazeddigital.com/Default.aspx   Error - The plugin {ATTACHMENT} was given the parameter id=94007 which is not valid. Error - The plugin {ATTACHMENT} was given the parameter id=94008 which is not valid.    
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