Hard Copy

As wonderful as the age of digital image is, a downside is that there is a strong tendency just to view our (and others) images only online. We post on Blipfoto, Flickr, Redbubble, and a whole lot of other online places. However there is something about an image in print. Do you have some favourite images that you have taken over the years? I would encourage you to get prints done of them and hang them on your walls. You will be surprised at your feelings about them as you pass them wandering around the house. They definitely take on a different quality and sense of meaning.

However we only have so much wall space in our homes, and even if we rotate images on display, we'll soon run out of space. This is where the photo-book comes in. There are quite a few producers of good quality coffee table sized photo-books around today, and most of them make it easy for you to upload our digital images, decide on a book design, and gradually lay out your images. I've done a few 30cm x 30cm coffee table books over the past few years. I started with a small one of two dozen black & white images inspired by the Blue Mountains where I live (these images will form the core of an exhibition I will be holding in the Blue Mountains in early 2015). Then last year, I did a photo project of 90 or so images depicting the season of Autumn (my favourite time of the year).

The image I have blipped today is the cover of my latest photo-book, and is a retrospective of my personal favourites, taken over my 40 or so years as a photographer. Interestingly, most images were taken over the last 7 years (the period of time in which I have had a digital camera). I included some favourites from earlier film scans that I had done, but I also realised that although I had taken some photos that I was very happy with during the 80's in particular, I think my photography has actually developed a lot during the last 7 years. I'm sure that part of the reason is that I actually get out & take a lot more images now days, and I guess the more you take, the better 'eye' you develop, and the better sense you develop for what images appeal to you personally.

Anyway, I edited my collection of favourites down to 150 or so, and the 30cm x 30cm format makes it easy to accommodate images in landscape, portrait or square formats. Each image occupies a single page, and I captioned each with only very basic information in under-stated grey text, so as not to distract from the images (which I wanted to speak for themselves).

I encourage you to print your images - for your walls, but also in photo-books - you will be surprised - you will feel differently about them when you view them in hard copy.