Photographing Books

Spine

In a sense, a photograph of a book is a piece of text.

Cover

There’s writing in it. The medium just happens to be jpg or whatever.

Photographing books. There are three approaches: (1) snap their spines, (2) mugshot the cover, (3) knock them flat.

Same as when cops arrest someone. (1) Bend them over the vehicle and put on handcuffs, (2) back at the station photograph them head-on looking stunned, and (3)  knock them around to get a confession.


Another analogy is a conference. (1) The chair introduces you to the audience with a sliver of who you are (name and title), (2) you, the speaker, gets up and faces everyone, appearing innocent or stoic or blithe, (3) in the Q&A you are beaten up and forced to fudge and maybe even dissemble. Despite your best efforts, much is revealed.

Laid out

Panasonic LX-2, f2.8, 1/25, 111018

Après publication

Editor tells author it doesn’t end with the writing.

...

Editor: Now before the book is printed, you’ll have to create a blog.

Author: So people can comment?

Editor: Yes.

Author: Well that’s not hard. The book was originally written on a blog.

Editor: But this après publication blog has to contain new material. It should be a new blog.

Author: A blog with the book title?

Editor: If the name’s available. If not, we’ll name the book with an available blog name.

Author: I think wh5 is available. I already checked.

Editor: And another thing. You’ll then have to go on Second Life to promote it.

Author: Oh. I thought that’s where we were already.

...

Pictures in blogs and books

This looks funny.

The picture?

Well when you open the book, the picture is squeezed into the middle. You expect to see the picture on the outside edge of the page.

Yes.

Watch. On the right page, it's on the right. On the left page it's on the left. Easy to see.

Yet on the blog, the picture being on the left doesn't interrupt the text so much. You go from left to right, reading the text first, seeing the picture on the right, second. There's a natural flow.

True, but, we look at book pages and computer screens differently. The geography isn't the same.

Aha, media. Depending on the media, the message goes to the left brain or to the right brain.

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