I’m thinking about making a book, a handmade book, using some of the photos I took in Kyoto, as well as a lot of old papers.
(Have I made a book before? Other than the two rudimentary back-to-back-to-back books I’ve made this year? No. Will that stop me? No.)
The book will be not necessarily about the photographs, but rather the whole tactile/visual experience of the book in general.
The photos will act as a theme, the “glue” that holds everything together.
So it’s not like I’m creating a series of fantastic photos, meticulously post-processed, and then printed on the finest paper around. No. I’m using a series of very good photos, selected and post-processed specifically with this handmade book in mind, and printed on less-than-traditional papers.
I’ve been so excited about the book, visualizing the final results, how I want it to look, etc. It’s the photo processing that’s been weighing heavily in the back of my mind.
I’m not a photo printer. I dislike the whole process. It’s always been a challenge and I avoid it. And since I don’t use my printer much (like never in the past year), I knew nothing was going to go right once I began printing. Which was last night.
And nothing did. I’ve apparently got clogged nozzles and need to do some research before I can proceed further. I did print out this image, however, on a couple of different papers, then went into the studio to play with them some more to see what would happen.
I’ve gone from total despair, deciding to chuck the entire project (yesterday) to hmmmm, I can work with this and can continue on (today).
These are two versions of the same picture — a monk in a temple in Kyoto. I’m probably going to go with the first version. I used diluted ink on it and it’s too dark in some places and needs to be controlled better, but it’s a good start. I just need to practice.
As I progress with the book, I’ll continue posting updates here.
So what are YOU creating today? I’d love to hear about it.
©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.
