Thursday, April 29, 2010

My First Photobook Sample

So I've been wanting to make a photo book in Indesign for the last little while. This is a sample from my first foray into actually making something with Indesign and learning a few of the tools and shortcut keys. Along with Indesign, I'm slowly learning a little more about Adobe Bridge, which seems more and more useful the more I use it.

Indesign makes doing the layout for a book so much more intuitive. As a photographer the two main design tools I use are Photoshop and a hammer, because if you can't photoshop it, smash it! Indesign is the right tool for doing layout. Period. You can do stuff like this in Photoshop and you can even get good and relatively fast at it, but it is nothing like doing the design with the proper tool.

Photoshop is for editing photos and Indesign is for making layouts. Even with a template, these 10 spreads would have taken a super long time. I'm pleased with them as a start into my life as a photo book designer.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Driving Range

Melanie and I went to the driving range the other day. We had a pretty good time. Things are going along pretty well. We'll be moving into our new house in mid-May.

All the cap and gown photos went very well and we are starting up with grad formal photos right away. I'm enjoying my work. The other photographer is moving back east at the end of the month and so I'll be shooting alone for a few months, which will be nice.

My istock photos are doing pretty well, although for the next month or so I hope to sell a larger quantity of small photos rather than equivalent dollar value of large photos so that I can get my gold cannister and royalty bump that comes along with it.

I've been percolating ideas for shoots and models in my head for the last little while and I hope to get a few shoots in this summer. I'm told that it's pretty average to make a dollar a shot per month on istock and so I really need to get out and shoot so that I can build my portfolio faster. It feels like I have been stuck where I am for ages even after adding a bunch of photos last month and in January.

Anyway, things are going well.