Black and White Photography Blog, Vol. I

The couch was in front of my house. I couldn’t wander around today because I was expecting a delivery so whenever I came downstairs I photographed people walking by the couch. I’d say that maybe one out of 30 people noticed the writing on the couch. I don’t think the couch will disappear until the weekend so I’ll try and do some more.

Dream Couch and Biscuit (my neighbor’s dog).

DAY 2 - DAWN

6 A.M. James De La Vega couch is recognized. Passerby hunts around for something to cut a piece of fabric with; picks up nearby twig and takes a piece of the couch on his way to work.

When the cat woke me at 5 a.m. I had been dreaming about the second law of - what physics - the entropy principle. Why does everything rust, fall-apart, turn to dust. What is up with the universe and this whole expanding to the point of extinction. I thought that energy plus mass were always the same. But they say that at some point the universe will be pretty much empty.

(This shows what happens when you watch an episode of that Universe show before retiring). Anyway, I was thinking about this stuff as the couch began to be dismembered.

* * * DAY 3 ***

You’re lucky — the couch disappeared today!

As mentioned - I’ve been doing the photos on a black background. Two orders had problems with the page number ink on the black background (they used black ink to print page numbers). There are a few pages of text at the end and the page numbers show up properly there. I just emailed them about it. The page numbers do display properly in the client preview software.

The catalogs are really looking good now. Here’s the last go at it.

Hardcover catalog: 46 pages; 98 images; smoke colored linen cover.

Latest catalog.

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I’ve put the catalogs up for sale. Pricing etc. is on this page. I’m selling them pretty much at cost at this point - (I’ve added minimum wage labor for my own part in all this).

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UPDATE ON CUSTOMER SERVICE

Wow! They said they knew about the issue. They told me how to fix it on the current order and for future orders. They sent a coupon to replace the order and shipping for free. And they will also replace the actual books I ordered if I cut the barcode off and send it to them. In other words - better than perfect service. Very impressive.  In an age in which computer software stuff goes wrong - that is how you keep a good customer.

I read somewhere - once - that the bike messenger was the most dangerous job in New York.

Oh the get rich quick ad schemes never do seem to work for me. The B&H ad on the side of the blog has about 60,000 impressions. From that there has been one sale netting me $2.43 which is a little bit more than one subway ride. So unless someone out there is planning to buy a Hass digital back or something expensive through it - I’ll take it down and put up a banner for my own store. One print sale from my store would blow away whatever I’m going to make through that ad.

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I’ve sent out 8 catalogs to design firms I’ve worked with in the past (some hardcover, some paper back) but most of them are leftovers from the testing phase.  Better sending them out then just letting them sit around the house.  All the catalogs I send out from now on will at least be up to snuff.  Of course while I was doing all this book printing I got so into it that I let some orders sit in the box too long.  I’m getting them out today and tomorrow.

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The Picaboo book is on the way via UPS.  Should arrive in a day or so.  My two last test books (non-catalog) are also on the way.  After that I can finish up the Central Park book; and then continue with my people book.  I change the name of it everyday.  Today it’s called Shots of New York.  Before that Composing New York, before that Shadow of New York.  Well whatever - it’s going to have writing.  That’s all I know.  Sort of a story book of how I started through the present day but only with people in the shots.  At this point my list of possible images is up to 275.  Not good.

I received the two paperbacks I did of the catalog. These were actually the best in terms of lack of magenta, and how the images looked against the black background:

Link to Catalog

I was happy with the layout I came up with as well. 40 some odd pages. Price, with the discounts, tax, and shipping: $16 per book. That is by far the best price so far. You’ve got to order over $100 to get the 40% discount. Fine with me since I plan to send / sell a lot of catalogs. And frankly, and book I do - I’m going to be able to sell at least $100 worth.

So that’s done with. I don’t think it makes sense to do the hardback catalog which is really much more expensive - though I’ll ship the couple I’ve made to some of the Interior Designers / Art Buyers I’ve worked with.

Now - one more thing to decide on. If there are a lot of images on the page - the black background works well in terms of minimizing the magenta look. However - I’m not sure that works if there is one big image on the page. Right now - I think the white background works best when there’s one image per page. I really can’t explain that.

What impressed me - was that in the small book, my deepest blacks were actually blacker than the black paper background. I’ve got a white and a black background version of the Central Park book on the way and then I’ll decide on that.

In the meantime - I’ve culled about 200 shots of people for what I think will be a 50 page people book - probably paperback to start. It’s a good way to see what works together before going larger - and the images are all at large image sizes so I can go to the medium-sized book easily.

One guess as to who won this dispute.  One clue - when the manager comes out and kicks dirt on the umpires shoes - who usually wins.