Against the
Light - Introduction
When I was still
shooting print film, I used to take my rolls to the local
camera store and have them developed and printed. At home
I would flip through all the images, take out all the bad
shots and keep the average and the good ones. My wife would
then put all those images in a photo book, together with some
decorative items and descriptive taglines.
Those
books are great fun. If I want to take a trip down memory
lane or share some images with family and friends, I just
walk to the bookshelf and pick one - it's as easy as that.
When
I started shooting slide film, things changed. I only had
my slides developed, and the money I saved on printing was
spent buying more film. As a consequence I shot a lot more
images on each occasion. I bought a projector and a projection
screen and from then on we had slide shows instead of photo
books.
Although
nothing beats a good slide show, it takes time setting it
all up and lacks the spontaneity of picking a book off the
shelf. So I bought a slide scanner and a good printer. But
scanning slides turned out to be very time consuming to say
the least, not to mention the time spent on post processing
and printing. As a result I only scanned and processed the
really good shots and only printed the extraordinary. Needless
to say, during that phase, I never made a photo book.
Two
years ago, with my switch to digital, I find myself shooting
more than ever before. As a result I have more keepers due
to the instant feedback. I'm spending more time behind the
computer than I would like to.
Sure,
I'm happy to be freed from slide scanning and framing, but
the simple fact that I have so much more images to sort out
and work on now means that I haven't gained much time. The
constant backlog of raw files waiting to be converted has
made me focus entirely on processing with little or no time
left for printing.
So
how do I show my images now? Well, I either go to my online
gallery or open selected folders on my photo hard drive. But
just like the old fashioned slide show, it isn't something
you do as spontaneous and easily as flipping through a nice
photo book. And quite frankly, gathering the whole family
around the laptop just doesn't feel the same.
But
sharing pictures with family and friends isn't the only reason
I started thinking about making photo books again. If you're
a professional photographer or want to become one, you can't
do it without a good old fashioned portfolio. If you visit
a potential client, a magazine editor or a publisher you would
want to show your images in the best professional manner.
Printing
your best work yourself and putting it in a standard portfolio
may do the trick, but what I wanted was a custom made hardcover
photo book without the ugly plastic sleeves, using only high
end printing techniques and top quality paper, and looking
just like an expensive coffee table book from the better book
stores.
There
are quite a few companies on the internet that offer custom
made photo books, including Shutterfly.com, Mypublisher.com,
Ofoto.com (by Kodak), Snapfish.com, ImageStation.com (by Sony),
iPhoto (by Apple) and SharedInk.com.
After
doing some considerable online research, one of my conclusions
was that only a few are Mac compatible. Since I work on a
Powermac G5 myself, this narrowed down my choice to either
Shutterfly.com, iPhoto or SharedInk.com.
In
my opinion, of all the companies there was one that clearly
showed excellent dedication to meeting the needs of professional
and critical amateur photographers.
That
company is SharedInk.com.
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