People have been telling me that I should go Blurb myself for some time now, and round July of last year I finally made up my mind to do just that. Took a while, but I finally got round to making 40 odd scans from silver negs and putting the whole damn thing together. So what's it like getting Blurbed?
Like everyone, when it comes to Blurb, I've seen some great books, and those anything but (content
and quality wise)- the vast majority in color. I received my first copy of
Small Rewards this week and just sent back the tweeked version which I then made "public." The first version was very... promising; the glossy cover looked great, and most of the B&W reproductions on the inside looked- OK. Some needed very obvious tweeking, but my worst fears were negated- for $30 bucks you can get a
reasonable representation of your work in book format. And that aint bad!
Forget about deep, rich, sensuous blacks and endless gradations- it's caveman B&W, but it gets the job done. Good news, highlights don't get blown out- but as for deeper tonal values and shadows, well.... all my tweeking was to open up shadow areas, and add contrast. Reproductions run towards the dark side, so scans should be a tad lighter (and choose the deluxe paper). That said, I'm sure someone more Photoshop savvy than I, with a calibrated monitor, etc, etc could no doubt get more refined images out of it. But I can only speak of my own admittedly primitive experience. And while I initially wanted to print one photo per two pages, that turned out to be cost prohibitive. The resulting soft cover 40 page "book" is so thin, it's as much pamphlet as book, and they're not gonna go flying off the virtual shelves and make ya rich (even if you tack on an add. one or two bucks for yourself in the price)- but again, for $30 bucks (incl ship) you got something representative in a very portable (in this case, 8X10 in) book format.
You can preview the book on the link above or through the book link on the right hand side, and I'll be removing my old, down and dirty Pet Cemetery scans from Flickr and gradually replacing them with the new and improved versions which I'll also be posting here, probably in groups of five...
BTW-- The SX-70 color photo is the only color photo in the book- and it's on the back cover only... All other photos, Nikons and Tri-X w/20mm and 16mm Nikkors.
A good, dear friend who has already suffered enough is now riddled with cancer. And so I go where I often go when I seek a place of solace and solitude- the pet cemetery in The Presidio. It's a unique little sanctuary secluded under lush pine trees, not very imposing- but sincere in the best way possible.
I've been putting off, procrastinating, and delaying the rather arduous task of scanning and post editing 40 odd, high res images from my Pet Cemetery series to (finally) put into book form (along with another project yet to commence). So making my intention public is yet another means to motivate myself to Blurb it up in a year's time... or not. Regular posting may become more sporadic, if so, ya know why... 
There I was belly down in the dirt, Tri-X and F100 in hand, focusing on what would hopefully be my latest contribution to the ever expanding world of pet cemetery photography, when a sidelong glance caught the barrel of a rather large lens aimed directly at me. Attached to the rather formidable lens was my first sighting of an absolutely humongous D3, a Nikon D3, and if I didn't mention it- dang, those things are huge! Looking past the Japanese photographer (no doubt exacting revenge for all the times I've aimed my wide angle at his fellow countrymen), I noticed an entire phalanx of photographers wandering about my "private" sanctuary. The camera club was in town.
