Month: November 2020

Its been a funny year for work (as can be expected!) travelling for workshops and visiting clients was not an option for most of it.

I have been busy all the same and this month I was happy to receive a couple more books I had been working on. The first is to accompany a new major nature series with David Attenborough called “Perfect Planet” (Silverback films for the BBC), here my dedicated work on getting the most out of the high dynamic range high resolution video grabs and making them as good as dedicated stills shots was at play. The CMYK printing process is much more limited than a bright TV image but with some love and care its possible to translate the feeling. I’m particularly pleased with this years effort and hope it achieves the five star reviews of recent books in the series. The series will be shown on the BBC soon, you can view an extended trailer here: BBC. The book is available at all good book stores (or Amazon).

The other book to arrive is from the Natural History Museum entitled “How Wildlife Photography Became Art”. This is a weighty book, both physically and in its subject matter. The images are from 55 years of Wildlife Photographer of the Year submissions so as you can expect this book includes the best wildlife photography in existence. Such a pleasure to translate the images into CMYK to retain the authenticity and intention of the photographers and avoid the all too common pitfalls of the printing process that would have taken their power away otherwise. Avoid Amazon and order it direct here: NHM Store

I hope 2021 will be a better year to get out and help clients with their systems and processes. I will be planning more imaging workflow and grading/retouching classes to help people get the most out of their photography. Also planned is a stock image site for my old stock photography, some images still as fresh as the day they were created and others now “retro” stock, look out for the launch of pixelstock.com early in the New Year.

I will be also working on some personal photographic projects to create new images and enjoy some photography again in my spare time. I would encourage everyone to dive into a creative art and enjoy creating stories with it.

I recently made a “pop up” store to help Sue sell her new photography cards. Sue’s images are very popular and she has chosen some of her favorites to produce 4 sets of blank cards that are ideal presents or a distinctively different Christmas card to send. I used my Selectimage domain that has been on the back burner for a number of years.

2021 Update: Sue now has a shop setup on her website to sell these items, you can find it here: https://www.sueflood.com/shop/

One of three books delivered this week from clients. This book is the definitive story of Rattan, the sustainable and elegant furniture material. A fascinating journey through the subject with beautiful, interesting and well chosen historical images.

Wonderful to work with Lulu and Elisa to help them get the best possible reproduction of some rare images that needed careful handling in order to match the high level quality of the rest of the book. When dealing with a wide variety of images from multiple sources it is doubly important to make sure that there is consistency in colour and tone quality and to ensure that no image lets down a page or section.

Much of the book was completed so I was just involved with the problematic images and after careful work injecting some love and attention I’m pleased to see that the whole book feels very consistent and this helps strengthen the fascinating story of rattan. You can order or buy the book from all good bookshops or Amazon.

If you are planning an important book that has a wide variety of images of varying quality then get in touch for a chat, printers can correct for some (limited) things but usually by compromising other images on the same page or strip. My careful grading and detail work ensures that consistency is built into every page and reduces reproofing and printing costs as well as elevating the overall quality of the book.