Vogel’s Book Available on CD

My hand-made book, Creativity/The Seeker’s Journey was released in 2007. Since its release the special edition hand-made book has sold more than one hundred copies!

The book’s eleven chapters will take the reader through the stages of creativity and inspiration. Included in the book are more than 150 quotes which provide inspiration for the reader and support for the text I have written. In addition to the Forward by James R. Hugunin, my long time art dealer and friend, Susan Spiritus has written the Afterword.

With the current pricing of the hand-made book at $225, I have made the decision to make the book available on CD for $20, plus tax and shipping. Exchange members can avoid shipping by picking up your copy at the next meeting and I’ll cover the tax too! The CD will make a great gift for the coming holiday season.

To purchase my e-book, Creativity / The Seeker’s Journey on CD Contact me by email vogelart@cox.net

For more info about the book go to www.lavogel.com/book

Blurb meet-up LA

Blurb is having it’s first (and long time in coming) meet-up, a free event in LA on Thursday, September 10, 2009 from 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM (PT).

From their announcement: 

We’ve been around for far too long to have never hosted a meet-up in LA. Well, that’s all changing. We love LA, and we want to party with you.

Join us at World Cafe on Main Street in Santa Monica on Thursday, September 10 from 6-9pm. Come kick it with some LA-based photographers, BlurbNation designers, and special VIP guests. We’ll even have a few of this year’s Photography.Book.Now honorees in the house (you don’t know who they are yet because it’s still a secret).

We’ll have food and drinks, plenty of Blurb books to check out, some giveaways and schwag, and some real live Blurb people to field your questions and check out your books.

This could be our best meet-up yet – hope you can make it!

by Douglas Stockdale

The PhotoBook named Top 10 photo blog

The Irish magazine Source Photographic Review this month has named The PhotoBook as one of the top 10 must read photographic blogs. This blog has been written by me, Douglas Stockdale, a member of the Photo Exchange.

I have been providing book reviews for the last ten months, covering a broad spectrum of photobooks that are focused on projects, series, monographs or fine art photographer biographies. Wow, a nice honor & recognition of the effort that I have placed on writing insightful and informative photobook reviews.

Jerry Burchfield – Understory

I just published my second Jerry Burchfield photobook review for his Understory: Florida Lumen Prints, which was published this year (2009) by Laguna Wilderness Press,  a publishing company that Jerry co-founded. Jerry is a professor of photography and the director of the photographic gallery at Cypress College in Cypress, CA.

The main subject of this book is a mural size Lumen print that Jerry was commissioned to create in Florida and includes many of the Lumen prints that were studies for creating the mural.

Best regards, Doug Stockdale

Jerry Burchfield book review

Photograph coyright of Jerry Burchfield, 2004

Just a quick note that I just published a photobook review of Jerry Burchfield’s Primal Images: 100 Lumen prints of Amazonia Flora, on The PhotoBook. I will soon post my photobook review of his most recently published (March, 2009) book Understory.

An interesting book in which the photographic prints he made in South America were created with a photographic process that is  as old as photography itself. For those who attended the Photographers Exchange meeting in June, you had a chance to see Ted’s prints that were created in a similar manner.

Jerry Burchfield is a professor of photography as well as the Photography Gallery Director at Cypress College, which is located in Cypress, California.

by Doug Stockdale

Douglas Stockdale – Insomnia: Hotel Noir

Insomnia: Hotel Noir copyright 2009 by Douglas Stockdale

I just published my latest photobook project Insomnia: Hotel Noir with Blurb and the large (11 x 13″) hardcover ImageWrap with Blurb’s premium pager is now available. nice.

More details about this photographic project that I started in 2006 can be found on the blog that I created, at www.insomniahotelnoir.wordpress.com, and is available here.

Best regards, Doug Stockdale

The PhotoBook on Facebook

Last September, I stated a new blog, called The PhotoBook,  dedicated to reviewing photographic books that are about photographic projects, series, monographs and bodies of work. Recently I have been getting some strong recommendationas from Andy Adams of Flak Photo to start a fan based page on Facebook. So today I took the plunge, and I now have a Facebook page about The PhotoBook which is here.

So like Larry Vogel said about his new blog last week, check it out and if you like it, become a fan.

Best regards, Doug Stockdale

FYI, yesterday I published my 47th review on The PhotoBook,which was  Graciela Iturbide’s book El Bano De Frida Kahlo.

Blurb announces BookSmart 2.0

Blurb, a Print on Demand (POD) service for self-publishing, announced today the release of the version 2.0 version of BookSmart, their proprietary book making software. From their press release, below, it appears that the 2.0 will have some attributes similar to InDesign, which will be a big step up in their book design capabilities.

BookSmart 2.0 includes many new features that give creative professionals full control in the customization of their book layouts, down to the pixel. The introduction of flexible containers allows bookmakers to control the size, location, layers and content type of all elements on the page. Precision tool bars, grid-lines for quick visual guidance, and the ability to save designed pages as custom layouts for reuse all elevate the bookmaking experience and offer extended flexibility for advanced users and consumers alike.

BookSmart 2.0 has improved workflow with the new option to save custom book templates for use on other book projects, greatly improving the workflow for professionals who want to reuse custom templates on similar projects. BookSmart 2.0 also features improved image and text handling, including the ability to find and replace text, and faster loading and caching of images. Additional features include 24-bit color support, and support for Vista.

“We are particularly pleased that the new BookSmart 2.0 also enables folks to expand, move, and add text and image containers on any layout – a degree of flexibility that our customers have been asking for”, said Eileen Gittins, founder and CEO of Blurb.

Concurrently, Blurb has also announced the availability of a new 12 x 12″ format book, available in hardcover, ImageWrap or softcover.

The BookSmart 2.0 is available for free download at www.blurb.com  and I hope to be able to evaluate it later this week. It will be interesting to see how this new version works with a photobook project that I am in the middle of.

By Doug Stockdale

Blurb PhotoBook Workshops

Blurb, one of the many Print on Demand (POD) book publishers has just announced a series of Workshops to help you with how to create a book using their software and templates.

The 4-hour workshops, which will be held in June 2009 in San Francisco , New York City, London , and Chicago , will feature photographer Dan Milnor, graphic designer Bob Aufuldish, and Lightroom guru Jerry Courvoisier. Participants will learn about the principals of book design, how to edit images in Lightroom for optimum results, and how to use Blurb books to promote their work. There is also an optional photography book review prior to the workshop.  The cost is $49 for the workshop, or $79 if you also participate in the photography book review.

For more information and details, go to www.blurb.com

by Doug Stockdale

Sports Illustrated – Slide Show

Slide Show copyright 2009 Sports Illustrated

For those who are interested in sports photography, sports trivia or photographs published in the magazine Sports Illustrated (aka SI), you will probably find this book to be a delightful and entertaining book. How ever, be warned this is NOT a how-to book on photographing sports events, although by carefully examining the photographs that illustrate this book, there is still much than can be learned.

When I was asked to review this book for Sports Illustrated, I immediately thought of my own past experiences with slides (transparencies, chromes, etc), which I have written about here. And interestingly enough, how I had marked up my slide’s mount with my own connotations. I also saw this as an opportunity to review the works of those photographers whom we have come to associate with this magazine; Neil Leifeer, Walter Iooss and Mark Kauffmann.

This book is an interesting back room look at what happens to an image after it is made, and how it can wonder around and reinsert itself when neccessary. Although the photographs are from the non-digital era, perhaps specificly the Kodachrome era (or the Ektachrome or Fujichrome era’s), there is still much to be learned about being there. And because these are the slides from the pre-digital era of the previous 50 years (SI launched in August 1954), it is also a nestaligic sports ride.

A part of what I found interesting was how these sports images were cropped to provide the cover stories, without the content being “altered”. For those familiar with cropping, you can change the resulting content of a photograph and the emphasis by what you leave in the photograph, as well as by what you delete out. The book provides the original photographic transparency (or ”slide” for those of you who have grown up digital) in its paperboard mount and adjacent to the photograph, the printed page from SI of the edited image.

The captions and accompaning articles are not about how the photographs came to be, but of the stories that are being illustrated with the photographs. And there are many iconic sports photographs that came about from the subseqent publication in SI, probably the premier sports magazine.

The 12 1/4″ x 12 1/4″ hardcover book with dust cover, 176 pages, was conceived and designed by then creative director, now special contributor Steven Hoffman and researched and written by associate editor Bill Syken. The book was printed in China.

By Doug Stockdale