Yet more Gonzo Publishing
Printing has always been the province of the professional, with the notable exception of ‘Readers’ Wives’ providing a platform for the amateur. Now though, mortals can see themselves in print without having to go to a vanity publisher or sprawl on a kitchen counter with their arse in the air while their boyfriend snaps off a few ugly beaver shots with a poleroid.
Companies convert your photographs into photograph albums for you.
Sometime between having your portrait painted by a grumpy Dutchman and being able to take pictures your telephone, people used cameras with a strip of film. This film was typically bought for a holiday and traditionally some of it was used before the camera was brought back home and put on a shelf somewhere and forgotten, only to be rediscovered again at Christmas or a birthday. The film was then used up and sent off to be developed and, two weeks later, you had 36 photographs recording anywhere from a few months to three years of family activity, a few shots on the beach, one or two totally black photographs (the result of trying to capture the magical effect of the Christmas tree seen through the after effects of a huge dinner and half a bottle of cooking sherry by not using the flash) and, if you were trying ‘to use up the film’, seven pictures of the dog.
You selected the best photographs, put them in the family album, put the album on the bookshelf and forgot about it. Traditionally, it was not seen again until you brought your fiancée home to meet your parents and your mother got it out, open the page of you, age six, about to go to casualty with a toy train stuck up your arse. Or naked on a rug as a baby if you’re into that sort of thing.
Today we can back up all our photographs and keep them all. The difficulty is how to display them and this usually means, depending on your class, using your expensive printer to produce a hard copy of your favourite shot or, if you live in a caravan, having a photograph blown up and printed onto a four foot square canvas. Two things to note here, tattoos rarely photograph well and, when enlarged, that hilarious shot of you and your best friends on a beach at Ibiza clearly shows a bloke in the background masturbating. Into your beach towel.
The alternative is to get a hardback album printed and bound for you and, I have to say, they look amazing on the adverts. The finished result is just like those coffee table books of photographs that people used to buy in the seventies and I would guess that, if you are that way inclined, seeing yourself in hardback glossy print must be quite a hoot, especially as you can put captions under the photographs.
Why stop at the family album and the coffee table though? If you can get a book of photographs then why not a book of pictures and text, like a children’s book…that you can then slip onto the shelves of the local Waterstone’s. then you can sit back and watch the fun as some outraged parent verbally assaults a baffled store manager because their tot has been found sobbing after picking up ‘Mr Bunny and Mr Fox’, with illustrations along the lines of H G Geiger meets an explosion in a vivisectionists. Or, fed up with the head librarian never stocking enough of your favourite author? Slip the children’s classic ‘Burn pikey-kid burn’ onto the shelves and apply for the position yourself once he’s sacked for ‘ordering’ it.
Why stop at the library. Want to impress your neighbours? Note if they have a photography book then reproduce it, making sure to insert, say, a carefully photoshopped picture of you hanging out with the Rolling Stones. Next visit, substitute your tome; ‘Hey, you have this, have you seen page 42, gosh, yes, that’s me. Sign it, well, sure.’ Extra points for using a photograph from the 70s, showing you exactly as you are now. You can tell if they have seen ‘The Shining’ by the degree of freak-out that occurs.
Companies convert your photographs into photograph albums for you.
Sometime between having your portrait painted by a grumpy Dutchman and being able to take pictures your telephone, people used cameras with a strip of film. This film was typically bought for a holiday and traditionally some of it was used before the camera was brought back home and put on a shelf somewhere and forgotten, only to be rediscovered again at Christmas or a birthday. The film was then used up and sent off to be developed and, two weeks later, you had 36 photographs recording anywhere from a few months to three years of family activity, a few shots on the beach, one or two totally black photographs (the result of trying to capture the magical effect of the Christmas tree seen through the after effects of a huge dinner and half a bottle of cooking sherry by not using the flash) and, if you were trying ‘to use up the film’, seven pictures of the dog.
You selected the best photographs, put them in the family album, put the album on the bookshelf and forgot about it. Traditionally, it was not seen again until you brought your fiancée home to meet your parents and your mother got it out, open the page of you, age six, about to go to casualty with a toy train stuck up your arse. Or naked on a rug as a baby if you’re into that sort of thing.
Today we can back up all our photographs and keep them all. The difficulty is how to display them and this usually means, depending on your class, using your expensive printer to produce a hard copy of your favourite shot or, if you live in a caravan, having a photograph blown up and printed onto a four foot square canvas. Two things to note here, tattoos rarely photograph well and, when enlarged, that hilarious shot of you and your best friends on a beach at Ibiza clearly shows a bloke in the background masturbating. Into your beach towel.
The alternative is to get a hardback album printed and bound for you and, I have to say, they look amazing on the adverts. The finished result is just like those coffee table books of photographs that people used to buy in the seventies and I would guess that, if you are that way inclined, seeing yourself in hardback glossy print must be quite a hoot, especially as you can put captions under the photographs.
Why stop at the family album and the coffee table though? If you can get a book of photographs then why not a book of pictures and text, like a children’s book…that you can then slip onto the shelves of the local Waterstone’s. then you can sit back and watch the fun as some outraged parent verbally assaults a baffled store manager because their tot has been found sobbing after picking up ‘Mr Bunny and Mr Fox’, with illustrations along the lines of H G Geiger meets an explosion in a vivisectionists. Or, fed up with the head librarian never stocking enough of your favourite author? Slip the children’s classic ‘Burn pikey-kid burn’ onto the shelves and apply for the position yourself once he’s sacked for ‘ordering’ it.
Why stop at the library. Want to impress your neighbours? Note if they have a photography book then reproduce it, making sure to insert, say, a carefully photoshopped picture of you hanging out with the Rolling Stones. Next visit, substitute your tome; ‘Hey, you have this, have you seen page 42, gosh, yes, that’s me. Sign it, well, sure.’ Extra points for using a photograph from the 70s, showing you exactly as you are now. You can tell if they have seen ‘The Shining’ by the degree of freak-out that occurs.
Labels: Books, Printing, Publishing
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