Let’s Publish a Coffee Table Book.

[nobigdeal]

That’s a good point on removing photos. Just looking for ways to include as many people as possible…

If you’re going to play with blurb, I’ll see if I can’t get Kat involved, and between us figure out how many photos we’re dealing with.

I sent my quick dirty mockup to the email addy in your profile.

If thats not the correct one let me know where to send it.
You can import it into the Blurb software.

One thing I found off the bat is that some photos we will need larger sizes from the photographer.

Also, before we get too deep into this someone should get Drews blessing.

[olavf]

Got it, thanks 🙂

A thought on the larger sizes – do we want to try and get copies of the pics without watermarks at the same time? Get together the full list of shots that are going in, and send one email to each Farktographer asking for clean copies of some rough size – say, 1500px wide or so?

[Kestrana]

Yes you need very high resolution pictures for blurb to process correctly onto paper. They may look fine in the computer but they don’t print well. If you’re getting permission from the photographers you might as well get them without the watermarks too. That’s an easy way to keep track of who has given permission for what photo, whether or not whomever is in charge of inputting into the blurb layout has their high resolution files.

[Kestrana]

Also I totally understand the desire to get as many people incorporated in the book as possible but I really think that 400 pages is too expensive for the larger market, and trying to cram 5 or 6 pictures on a page is going to take away from the pictures. Prices for books larger than 10×8 go up exponentially, and 10×8 is the size of a regular sheet of paper. If we put more than 4 pictures on a page, each one winds up being about 2×3, and then you need to add the text of the picture’s name and photographer and any other information we want to attach to them.

However, if you’re going to talk to Drew about it, maybe he can work some magic Fark powers to get us a deal that would allow for more pages at a cheaper price – and if we order more than 15 or so copies, there’s a discount as well.

I guess it really comes down to a question of priorities. Is it more important to have huge farktographer inclusion? To create a professional and polished looking product? To be able to price the product competitively in the market, so that people outside of the artists may want to buy it and be exposed to some of the great talent and love of photography it embodies (and the poor working stiffs who participate here can afford it too 😉 )? If all three of these are equally important we probably need assistance from a publisher to make it happen because combining the first 2 priorities inevitably inflates the third.

[olavf]

I think #1 and #3 are what I’d shoot for finding a balance for. I mean, this is Farktography after all 😉

But, the more I think about it, the more I agree that someone’s got to talk to Drew about it. It does have the Fark name attached to it, and he owns that. We should probably have a solid plan before we do though.

I haven’t started the picture count yet, but hope to get cracking on that by tomorrow – I need to get my shots in order for this week still – priorities, right? I think that once I have those numbers compiled we’ll have a better idea on how we want to move forward.

[orionid]

What would we do for permissions for Pangolyn‘s photos? I could ask her mom for permission, but wouldn’t know where to go from there. Also, I’m not sure if anyone’s gotten into her computer yet, she had it pretty well passworded, and her flickr stream only had fark-sized photos. There’s definately a few of her’s that I’d like to see included. case in point

/edited cuz I don’t speak bbcode.

[Kestrana]

If its possible to count the # of diverse photographers at the same time, that might also be helpful. While there’s certain to be a fair difference between 10 & 20 places, maybe there isn’t such a big difference between 15 & 20.

If its not convenient to do at the same time let me know and I’ll get that info together.

If the difference were, say, 9 photographers, we could easily find a way to include those people on the title/index/cover/toc etc.

[Kestrana]

What would we do for permissions for Pangolyn‘s photos? I could ask her mom for permission, but wouldn’t know where to go from there. Also, I’m not sure if anyone’s gotten into her computer yet, she had it pretty well passworded, and her flickr stream only had fark-sized photos. There’s definately a few of her’s that I’d like to see included. case in point

/edited cuz I don’t speak bbcode.

Her next-of-kin should be able to provide permission. The resolution needed depends on the size of the photo. If we receive permission for pangolyn‘s work, we can probably use the fark-sized shots and be creative about the layout if we don’t have access to anything larger.

[olavf]

Orionid – I definitely want to see hers included as well. If it’s okay with her mom, I can send you info on how to break the password on a Windows computer (It’s not that difficult – we had to do that here at work a few months back, but you need physical access to the machine).

Kestrana I was planning on doing a full list by contest, so we don’t have to go through them all a second or third time. Basically, for the top 20 in each contest, # of photos, Fark handles, and some sort of picture identifier if that’s possible. If I assemble it into a spreadsheet mining the data shouldn’t be all that difficult.

[Kestrana]

Great, thank you very much. I think it will be a lot easier to make a plan once we know the amount of data we are looking at.

[nobigdeal]

Also I totally understand the desire to get as many people incorporated in the book as possible but I really think that 400 pages is too expensive for the larger market, and trying to cram 5 or 6 pictures on a page is going to take away from the pictures. Prices for books larger than 10×8 go up exponentially, and 10×8 is the size of a regular sheet of paper. If we put more than 4 pictures on a page, each one winds up being about 2×3, and then you need to add the text of the picture’s name and photographer and any other information we want to attach to them.

However, if you’re going to talk to Drew about it, maybe he can work some magic Fark powers to get us a deal that would allow for more pages at a cheaper price – and if we order more than 15 or so copies, there’s a discount as well.

I guess it really comes down to a question of priorities. Is it more important to have huge farktographer inclusion? To create a professional and polished looking product? To be able to price the product competitively in the market, so that people outside of the artists may want to buy it and be exposed to some of the great talent and love of photography it embodies (and the poor working stiffs who participate here can afford it too 😉 )? If all three of these are equally important we probably need assistance from a publisher to make it happen because combining the first 2 priorities inevitably inflates the third.

I’m thinking that if Drew gets a publisher involved we may run into some resistance from contributors over use of photos. If any money made off this is going to charity I will not have any issues with use of my photos. However if soemone is looking to make a buck off this then that is a different story. I’m sure most probably feel this way.

Maybe the best thing is to discuss it with Drew and see what he thinks. If a publisher is going to get involved then they most likely will do all the legwork.

If he doesn’t want to get involved but gives his blessing for us. Then I think we just shoot for publishing a sort of yearbook of Farktography, available to all contributors and anyone else who loves our photos, but sold through an online publisher like Blurb at cost.

Remember, most high school yearbooks cost around 100 bucks. So putting a Farktography yearbook together we can expect it to cost about the same.

[linguine]

If the goal of this is to get as many farktographers would it be easier to just let anyone who wants to be in the book get have some of their best entries in rather than trying to do the top 10 or 20 each week and then trying to track down all the people that just competed a couple of times and have left or leave holes in the top 10/20. Maybe do something like base the number of photos in the book off of total votes so that the people with the most good entries are able to show off a little bit more of their work.

[nobigdeal]

If the goal of this is to get as many farktographers would it be easier to just let anyone who wants to be in the book get have some of their best entries in rather than trying to do the top 10 or 20 each week and then trying to track down all the people that just competed a couple of times and have left or leave holes in the top 10/20. Maybe do something like base the number of photos in the book off of total votes so that the people with the most good entries are able to show off a little bit more of their work.

We could do that too. Let anyone who wants their photos considered submit them somehow. Either to a flickr group that we make or right here to this site.

[olavf]

Depends on which way we want to go with it, really. If it’s something contest-themed, we should probably include the winners. Otherwise, if we’re doing a free-for-all that’s okay too, but we’re going to need to have some talk about how we’d want to organize it.

[olavf]

FWIW I’ve counted out the last eight contests. Averages per contest and extrapolation are as follows:
Top 10: 11.13 *52 = 578.5 (images for the year)
Top 15: 16.63 *52 = 864.5
Top 20: 21.25 *52 = 1105

*edit: I can break this down further, or keep the spreadsheet available on the web if needed.

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