Of Foreign Lands and People: Photobooks

Monday, 30 May 2011

Photobooks

Photobooks! What a fantastic idea. I'm not surprised by their popularity. In a age of digital photography what a perfect way to publish all those memorable snapshots, document amazing travel experiences, being creative with art photography....

I've recently started putting together a photobook of my 2007 trip to Europe through blurb.com (Ok, not really that recently - I started it a few months ago - it's a work in progress, I've change the format one too many times, I'm a well-rehersed procrastinator, I originally thought is was going to be a small project - maybe 50 pages, but that has expanded to about 120 and it's still growing - I forgot just how many photos I took that year...Eeeek!). Check out the website http://www.blurb.com/ - it has some amazing examples of photobooks which people have created. Anyway, 'my photobook' has me reminiscing about this fantastic trip I took in 2007 which comprised of a period of study in Paris, visits to family in Belgium and Belgrade, attending an art school in the hills of Tuscany, a tour of Eastern Europe, a summer in Croatia, as well as bits and pieces in between.

I guess the idea of a blog is usually to write about something 'as it's happening', but I think I might just break away from this constructed idea a bit (I'm always diverging from various pre-conceived 'paths') and will be writing a bit about past events and experiences - things I remember, things that made an impression on me, things that inspired...

To start with, I'm hoping to write about my time in Paris and give an insight into a few places the average visitor to Paris often misses - Paris is such an amazing, interesting and unusual city, which you cannot completely appreciate in just a short visit. People tend to do the usual tourist route - the Eiffle Tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre...and often miss out on the little things which made Paris memorable to me.
I also anticipate to add some of the many photos I took during my few months in Paris, which will hopefully appear in my completed photobook.

Enjoy!