Trekearth Book

[kinginexile]

Don,

yes, i think any book should show the huge diversity of the TE membership, 4, to 6 pictures to a page, and participation should be about love of photography, not just top shots from photographers who are amateurs by the name, but professional in skills and commerce ("i can give you a shot from me for free"...I saw that about the calendar, sorry but....Cooome oooon! :-)), and so-so shots from very popular members. Sorry for being frank again, but if we are starting something anew, like a book, let's try not to duplicate past shortcomings, let's try to be all-inclusive. I think we can have 250 to 300 members represented in the book, EQUALLY, and the cover should be voted by all.

[Homerhomer]

I on the other hand would suggest not covering everything and making everyone happy, but go very specific. Even national geopraphic isn't trying to cover it all in one edition.

I guess is that there will be very few poeple who would want to put in an effort and know how to do it, so screw the rest of us. Perhaps concentrate on the topic that is close to your heart, let's say you are a cyclist, then make it a main topic of the book, contact an organization that could benefit from some of the proceeds (say a charity of amputee cyclists) which could help with distribution, gather a group of writers and editors and other folks who have skills and go from there.

IMO if you cover everything you will produce a product that has been done million of times, and just about 999,997 times failed miserably, but make it unique and targeted for a specific group, it may work.

In addition from what I hear poeple work years to produce a decent book, it just isn't a weekend project, do you have what it takes?

Good luck to all involved.
Peter

[kikvel]

Yes, we have obstacles, and we have very good ideas, we should brainstorm here, now, this is the moment, everyone contributes a lot here

I would invite other TE members to join this discussion, every contribution is precious

K.

[rutti]

Hi guys.

I've just spent some time browsing through all the posts in this thread and I'm happy that there is so much will. I've only been a member for about a week but I love the site and I'll stick around for long. This community is one of the most active I've ever encountered on the net.

I like the ideá alot and I absolutely think that it's doable. However it IS a big project and I think that it would be very difficult to organise it with people from 10 different countrys working together. What we need is a core group of enthusiast that live near eachother and have the possibility to meet often. Publishing a book together is not something you do over an internet forum. Atleast that's what I think. We need at least three people that can take responsibility and have time to spare. I'm sure there are many people, like me, who would like to contribute with what's possible. But again, there is a limit to what we can contribute over the net.

Thanks.

[mlopes]

K,
you've did one very important thing, start the engines... now we need to heat them up and fly towards the finish line ;)

I think in the last hours we've walked the first steps:

- There's new people joining this (jakob)
- There's Adam support -- very important

Now imo we need to start thinking about the aim of the book:

- A generalistic book of photography, almost like an Atlas as sugested by Loic or a well definid subject like the tsunami callendar?
- Organization... jakob make a very good point... we are all over the world, it's hard to get along together, shouldn't we create teams to studie some subjects, or at least 2 or 3 main responsables?

Mário

[kikvel]

yes me need to establish an organization

I have done this so far:

- Check prices of printing the book at Py.
- Check prices of shipping to Spain just as a reference.

I think that we have to set also the goal or the theme of the book. I still believe that we should create a book to show the "world" represented by the many pictures we have here. This would include views of all around the globe and it should give more opportunities to everyone to be included. I believe the richness of our approach would be the diversity of pictures we can have in one book.

I think also that creating a theme would sectorize too much the book and many would feel excluded.

On the other hand, we also have to invite other TE members to join the project. I believe we should have at least pictures for a 300 pages book or a 500 pages book (1 per page? or two per page?)...maybe only one per page with the photographer`s notes and info of the picture.

I would suggest you to continue posting your thoughts.
Personally I believe that after making some definitions, the tasks would be distributed and once this happens the preparation of the files wouldn`t take too long. As we assume we have distributed resources all over the world.

I estimate a maximum of nine months to prepare and have everything ready. The most difficult part is to define things, and the selection. Once this is made everything would run smoothly.

K.

[joseelias]

César,

As I said previously, in the beginning of the thread, I feel that one single; generalist book is not the best option.

You’ve show us a book as an example, and that was nice, but I must confess that seeing a high speed train in the opposite page of a macro of a spider does not make any sense except for the fact that they were probably trying to please everybody. I felt no coherence in those two pages and personally that was not appealing to me and I doubt I would feel tempted to buy it. A book like this looks more like a catalogue of pretty pictures than something coherent and structured.

If you look carefully in the book-stores you’ll see that all books have specific themes. Just a few examples from the FNAC store:

UN MONDE D'ENFANTS / GEDDES, ANNE
Horses / ARTHUS-BERTRAND, YANN E JEAN-L
ON BARCELONA / various artists
LIFE WORLD WAR II HISTORY'S GREATES / N. I.
Century: One Hundred Years of Human Progress, Regression, Suffering and Hope 1899-1999 / BERNARD, BRUCE
Lisbon in the piers of memory 1957-1974 / GAGEIRO, EDUARDO
EARTHSONG AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHS OF OUR… / various artists
KIDS / TESTINO, MARIO
The Sea : Day by Day / Philip Plisson
1940'S DECADES OF THE 20TH CENTURY / YAPP, NICK
DOG DOGS / ERWITT, ELLIOTT
Mirror of Nations – National Geographic: a window over the world / various artists
Portraits / various artists

I believe that starting with a smaller thematic book, which could be the first of several, is the best option. In this first one maybe only part of the members would be shown, but if everything went well it could open the doors for several others and at the end a much, much larger number of members would have been shown and involved, besides the advantages I’ve previously mentioned.

Ok, maybe we can plan two thematic books, if that’s more pleasing…

Personally I don’t care if I’m not included in the themes, as I’m just happy to be part of this community and seeing it produce such a nice accomplishment. I’m just happy that some of my friends and people whose work I admire may get to be published. And if eventually I could be part of a book I would not mind to wait.

In Portugal we say that “The higher you climb, the bigger is the fall”, and that’s something to consider. I rather stumble in the first step than to fall from the top of the ladder… If a smaller book fails, the damage will be limited and we will learn with the errors. Besides, the damage won’t be so big that it will undermine our trust and the publishers trust in a second attempt. The same will not happen with a 300 or 500 page book. More if a big book fails you’ll be using / “burning” up too many photos that will not be included in a possible future second book.

[maciekda]

it is a lot of work to publish a book. I would suggest to start with something simpler first - sth like postcards, T-shirts or calendars.
in Paris I saw beautiful postcards with children from asian, south american and african countries. we have a lot of beautiful portraits here, why not to make some beautiful postcards?

[rutti]

Yesterday when I went to bed I got an idéa of a possible theme for the book(s). Since most people on this site are travelers and many photos are taken in foreign countries I think that the theme could be for example: "the way foreigners experience spain". That's not a suggestion for a title but for a theme. I think it would be really interesting for people in a specific country to learn about the perception foreigners have of their country.

People who have visited, for example, spain and taken photos can chose the snaps that for them represents spain and write about their experience. This would be fun and maybe more easy to organise.

What do you think? I know I would enjoy a book about how visitors in Sweden feel about my country and people.

[rutti]

Maybe a title could be something like "Spain through the eyes of the world" or "through the lens of the world". Or france, usa, india, whatever.

Something like that.