To make it a bit easier, I thought I'd link to my online online activities to show what I've been up to over the past few weeks.
To see the results of
eTivity 5, talking on the Lulu forum, click
here!
eTivity 6 was to customise my
storefront, which you'll have to have checked out to get here. Hope you like it!
To see my result of
eTivity 7, again talking on the Lulu forums, click
here.
I unfortunately had a fair few issues with
Del.icio.us, and as a result I haven't got any photobook/mag related bookmarks in there (
eTivity8)because they kept messing up. There are a couple of bookmarks in there that people may find usual for general photography, but that's life...
eTivity9 was a bit of a non-starter for our group. We knew initially what we wanted to do, but actually getting the photomag dummy sorted wasn't an option in a physical sense - we did sketches and worked online together through conference e-mails to get to a solution (leading to the
online magazine at
DeviantArt that you can flick through, or the copy you'll be able to order through
Lulu), so here's a rough retrospective photomag proposal...
1-Description of theme:
For our magazine, we decided to focus on the often neglected up-and-coming photographers. To focus our topic more on a particular social network, we went straight to
DeviantArt, a website on which
Paul, Lee and Nicky already have accounts.
2-Frequency
Paul, Lee and Nicky are planning on continuing the project on after the actual university project finishes, revolving around
monthly magazines that focus on up-and-coming artists in a variety of fields. Good luck to them!
3-Description of photography:
-The source:
DeviantArt.com was our source, and the basic premise was to select photographers we thought had that
"X-factor" (to use a popular TV show...) and then e-mail them with a generic content e-mail we devised. This explained the concept of the magazine, what they could expect of us and what we expected of them.
Fortunately, everyone asked was fine with submitting their work to us, so we didn't have to deal with anyone saying no - however if they had, it wouldn't have been a problem and we could've asked one of the other several hundred thousand people on there.
4-Description of text:
The text in the magazine focuses largely on descriptions of work, biographies of artists, and tutorials. The magazine will largely be a boost to people, so it won't be overly critical, but there will be constructive criticism in there in ways to help artist's progress.
5-Description of team roles:
Paul took the
Night Photography section,
Lee took
Portraiture,
Nicky took
Landscapes and
I took the
Tutorials. Overall, we all contributed to the design as we bounced ideas around amongst ourselves. The majority of
flash work (again, go to the
DAmn Fine DA page for the results!) and the
website work (
DAmnfinemagazine.co.uk) was down to
Lee and Paul, so kudos to them for their technical wizardry!
Overall, we had a central theme for the design and layout, and this template was shared amongst us, so although the content varied, the look was fundamentally the same throughout the magazine, which we felt was important.
6-design:
The magazine is going to be the
"Comic book size" (
5.83" x 8.26") from
Lulu,
spiral-bound to make it look more like a
sketchbook, which was the idea we were after.
The format of the magazine was pretty standard, and again this can be viewed on the
Preview on the
Lulu content page (linked above), or the
online Flash magazine. However, in essence, it was to have it with 'fake' lined paper, and then have it look very much like a
DIY, analogue-produced 'zine.
7-relationship between online and print version:
The
online and offline versions are almost identical - the Flash copy is exactly the same as the hard-copy, even down to the turning pages.
8: pod
We are again using
Lulu to distribute hard-copy, but we are using
DA to exhibit the
Flash version.
For my next
eTivity, reviewing another photobook, I headed over to
Kate's page and reviewed her book,
Journeys. Read my review
here!Finally, here is
eTivity 11, a review of my time here on
Lulu.
Learning in an online environment was a relatively familia concept, as we'd done online work in our previous year at university. However, it's a slightly different experience to be completely immersed in online learning, simply because of how easy it is to access help. The
Online FAQ threads were a great help in this sense, as no matter what time of day or whatever your problem, someone was either there to help, or had left information that was of use to you.
Learning in a "
Public" domain such as an online,
POD client is a different experience to learning in a closed off,
university environment. However, because of the relatively anonymous nature of it, it doesn't feel quite like having a photography tutorial at a real bookshop! As I've mentioned, the masses of people able to help and support you through your online time is invaluable, and so learning in this style has been very effective. I feel like I've really learnt a lot for the short time we've been working on these projects.
The disadvantage of circulating our work in a
commercial, or
non-academic field, is relatively small, but to me - important one. Personally, I wasn't entirely happy with my photobook, simply because I knew the photographs in the book weren't my best. I'm aware that that wasn't the aim of the project, that we weren't creating a portfolio book, but at the same time I felt at times that my work was misrepresenting my potential, and I hoped that people wouldn't read my book and assume that that was "as good as it gets" from me. However, this isn't really a major issue, and the benefits of learning alongside people who are doing what we're attempting to do for real, in the actual world, was useful.
It's never to early to get your work out there and get your name spread around, and as a result, starting to publish our work
independently (no middle-men to have to pay, etc. - apart from publishing costs) in the middle of our second year is a good time to do it. We can show what we've learnt in the first year, and use it as a basis to begin the difficult and challenging third year. For me, this is a great idea. It's also interesting knowing that it's not just your immediate staff/tutor who is going to be assessing your work, as receiving reviews from the general public (if only!) is a great acid-test of your work, to give you an idea of how it would fare in the sink-or-swim real world.
Self-publishing is a great idea, and really helps new artists get their work displayed without having to compromise their ideals or aesthetic to a group of people who may or may not understand where their work is coming from. Being able to get your book (or whatever you're publishing) to look exactly as you want it is a great help to getting your message across to the general public and consumers, so instead of having to dilute your message by having teams of editors tear it to pieces, it gives you a great chance to fulfil your aspiration and dreams. It also reduces the money you lose from the cover-price of your book, once the money is taken out of the cover-price to cover printing and Lulu's fees, you're beginning to make money, whereas the middle-men such as editors and curators would obviously want a cut otherwise.
Again, working in a social network really helps, not just in terms of getting access to help to publish your work, but also by having a group to support your work, give you critical feedback, and just generally help you along the way. Publishing in a group also helps you push past the difficulties of self-publishing (Why won't it upload my .PDF?! Why is my work not pre-flighting correctly?!) and achieve what you set out to do. As they say, there is strength in numbers.
I'm very much glad I didn't use a template from
Lulu for my book, as to be honest, I found them lacking. Whilst I wanted a simple, clean-cut, relatively minimalist look to my book, I didn't want to use a weird, colourful, over-the-top template and graphic package from Lulu, so being able to just upload pre-made PDFs was a great help. I'd really recommend this to anyone trying to use Lulu.
Overall, despite issues with the site's functionality (like the issues we had with it not updating our storefronts, etc.), it's still a good first rung of the publishing ladder for we budding artists. It's never too early to get your owork into the public domain, and this site really helps that. Although it is hard to use, the ultimate result is worth the effort.
