Book design

I've had a think about the type of book that I want, things such as the type of cover, the size of the book, the amount of pages that I am going to need and the type of paper that I want to use.

I have come to the conclusion that I want to produce a standard landscape book (25cm x 20cm) this is mainly so that I will be able to fit my images on the pages properly rather than getting a smaller book and having to cut parts of the images off loosing their full impact. I think I am going to go for 40 pages, allowing me to put a variety of different photographs into the book showing different types of plants and flowers. At this point im notreally too sure about the paper type that I want so thats still something I need to think about. I also think that I am going to go for a soft cover to the book as I think it will look best however I am still thinking about having a hard cover, so theres still a few things that I need to figure out.

I have thought a little bit about the type of design I want on the pages within the book and I have done these two quick sketches just to show what I am thinking of:

Designing the book

I think the next thing that I need to do now is to start thinking more about the design of the book that I am going to make, things such as the size and the amount of pages that I want the book to have, this is really the starting point that I need to enable me to go on and design the inside of the book, the amount of columns and space for writing that I need to have, also I need to decide how many and which of the photographs that I have taken I want to be in the book. I need to choose the photos that express my intentions the clearest. So there are a few different things that I definitely need to think about within the next few days, I am going to start doing little sketches and things like that just jotting down my ideas to see what works and looks the best.

Research

I was searching the Internet to try and find some photographs that relate a little bit to the type of photographs that I am taking, I have come across a few different photographs that are shown below.

 

credit: http://www.nyip.com/ezine/outdoors/flowers.html

  credit: http://www.tomanthonyphotography.co.uk/flowers-c-2


These photographs don't relate that much to the type of photos that I am taking but I really like the colours and the compositions. The images are just really eye catching and strong due to this and the colours within them. There along the lines of what I am doing yet different at the same time as they don't really have anything surrounding them, well anything that you can see anyway.

Credit:  http://www.tomanthonyphotography.co.uk/flowers-c-2


I also came across this website http://www.peterjhosey.com/GardenFlowers.aspx , which has loads of photographs of flowers that are taken by Peter J Hosey. I again really like his photographs, although they don't relate directly to what I am doing as they don't necessarily show any of the area surrounding the flowers. There are a few photos that relate a little more to the direction in which I am going in such as

Credit: http://www.peterjhosey.com/GardenFlowerPhotos.aspx

I also looked at the photographs on these website to allow me to see a variety of ways that different photographers approach photographing flowers and plants;

 http://www.sarahjanecovey.co.uk/gallery.html  

http://celiahenderson.co.uk/gallery.htm

http://www.tonyhowell.co.uk/new/pinkflowers2.htm

http://www.htedwards.co.uk/portfolio73355p3.html

I feel that this small amount of research has helped to inform me a little more about the ways in which photographers have approached photographing flowers. I want to make my photos a little different to the majority of the images that are above, mainly by giving them a bit more meaning and direction due to the fact that they have been taken to document the flowers and plants that I have come across whilst I have been out.

I was thinking...

At the moment I am really pleased with the direction this project is going in, having struggled for a good few weeks to get my thoughts on track to enable to pick a topic that would actually be successful. I got there in the end! I knew from the start that I wanted to do something with flowers and plants, I just was not too sure of what direction to take it and what type of photos to capture. That's when I decided to go with the route of documenting the flowers and plants that I come across everyday. From the images that I have taken, the ones that have maybe a little bit of road or house' within them seem to be working a bit better than the images that just have flowers within them. I think this is partly because it gives them a bit more direction and you can see what type of environment and area they are within rather than just simply having the flowers to get all of the information from.

photos

As development for this assignment I went out on a walk yesterday to the library and decided to do some work at the same time so I took my camera with me. I simply photographed all of the interesting plants and flowers that I came across on the streets that I walked along. some photographs are more interesting than others but as development they are good, the photographs that I took are below.

This is the route that I walked to get these photos,

There wasn't really anything that interesting that I came across during this walk, but there were a few different plants and flowers that caught my eye' which I have uploaded below.

photographs....

This afternoon I decided to go for a walk through a park on my way home from Manchester, using the idea that I have mentioned in the previous post about walking a route and seeing what I can find. I wasn't too sure what I would find, or if id even find anything interesting at all, however I am quite pleased with the photographs that I have managed to take.

This is the area where I walked (marked in blue)

Although it wasn't such a big area that I walked I feel that I have managed to get some good photographs at this stage, the photographs are below.

Some of the photographs here are more successful than others due to the compositions and such, but this is something that I am going to continue to experiment with by taking lots of different photographs during walks that I take to document the different flowers and plants that I see.