OK, I’ve decided on a solution so that I can post my book. I added a page of text explaining the situation and posted the PDF as is. Hopefully I won’t get sued (apparently it’s not very likely: see “Can a Recipe Be Stolen?”), and maybe I’ll even inspire some purchases of the cookbooks that some of the recipes are drawn from.
Here is the link to the completed book on the SoFoBoMo page:
I finished in perfect time! I started shooting on May 24, finished the PDF on June 23 and had 22 copies of it printed and spiral bound to give to the people involved, and got most of them distributed that same day. I had participated in a two week course on the theology of food, titled "Food: Creation, Community, and Communion." That was going to be the title of my SoFoBoMo book. I took photos throughout the entire course, of us working in the garden, cooking, and of course the food itself. I've put a selection of the best of those in my Food Course Flickr group.
But I shifted my project goal as the course progressed: I decided to create a cookbook with all the recipes of the dishes we ate -- the food was amazing! I began collecting the recipes (sometimes by photographing the page in the cookbook they came from, other times typing them in directly from a friend's description, or copying from emaikl). Fortunately, I had taken enough photos of food to illustrate the cookbook with a photo for nearly every dish (ended up using a total of 42 of them -- not always my very best shots overall, but the best of the food ones I did).
Unfortunately, I can't post it on the web, because it ended up being a cookbook (with photographs of nearly all the dishes), and some of the recipes came from copyrighted sources, and I didn't track down sources in all cases. Even when I did, I'm not sure what the legality is of republishing a recipe from a published cookbook without permission. So, while I have the personal satisfaction of having finished, I don't get credit on the SoFoBoMo website for being among those who did. Oh well, at least I learned I can finish such a project, and will be better equipped to do it next year.
Here's the front cover, at least;
I'm back from Galiano Island now and am still not quite sure what hit me. It was an amazing experience, hard to put in words. It was pretty exhausting -- hardly a moment to sit and think. Our routine (weekdays) was usually: breakfast at 8, morning prayers around 8:45, class from 9-12, lunch around 12:30 or so, about an hour of free time (which was all the free time we had and we had to use it to do our daily assignments), a couple of hours of work projects (either work in the garden, kitchen cleanup and meal prep, or working with our teams to research and plan the meal we were going to present), dinner, evening prayers, and occasionally a class-related movie in the evening (e.g., "The Future of Food"). Any gaps between those items were filled with walking back and forth between the Wilkinsons' house, where classes and meals were held, and the cottages most of us were staying in; showers after working in the garden and getting all sweaty; and quick checks of email.
I took 2074 photos in all over the two weeks. I'm now into Phase Two of SoFoBoMo, which is selecting which ones to keep for the book. I also want to share a larger subset of them with all the people I took the course with, so I've begun a first pass, which I'm about halfway through. The ones that haven't been weeded out so far are up on my Flickr page. A very interesting phenomenon, by the way: I was somewhat apologetic about posting a couple of potentially disturbing photos showing blood and guts from slaughtering a lamb, but those have been the most popular ones for people to go and visit -- three times as many visits on those as the average for all the other photos in the set. Go figure. I guess people are into blood and gore.
I haven't done much editing yet, other than fixing the exposure and shadows/highlights on a few of them. I'm finding I like the exposure editing features of ACDSee Pro quite well and am so far doing all the work in that, rather than Photoshop. However I know I do prefer Photoshop for detail touch-up work. It seems to preserve the pixel resolution in the vicinity of the editing better than ACDSee does. Before I went out to the island, I did a very thorough clean of my camera, including cleaning the sensor, but I still wasn't able to get rid of a few visible dust specks. So I'm anticipating I'll have to do some spot removal. I guess I will have to have my camera professionally cleaned.
The Humane Society of the US has created this short film (26 minutes) about the importance of stewardship of animals as part of God's creation. Apparently they are realizing the value of enlisting the help of people of faith in this important work, and people of faith are waking up to their responsibility to care for their fellow creatures. This is good news!
Thanks to Matt Humphrey, one of the TAs for the Food Course I'll be taking later this month, for the pointer to this video. I'll repeat his caution:
WARNING: There are some disturbing images here of the treatment of animals. I think it is essential that we become people of truth-telling, which means to face the facts rather than hide behind slogans like "that can't be true - farmers wouldn't do that." This is a call to action and faithfulness which demands thoughtful reflection and creative action.
Watch and pray.
I should point out that at about 13:49 in the video, Rev. Dr. Laura Hobgood-Oster relates a story about Jesus stopping a man from beating his mule. This is extra-biblical (it's from the Coptic Gospel found in the Nag Hammadi library). It's a nice story and quite in keeping with what Jesus might well have done, and surely many of the stories written down about him by others besides the Gospel writers really did happen. But it's non-canonical. However there are in the Bible passages that clearly talk about taking good care of animals, e.g. Proverbs 12:10 ("The righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel."), Deuteronomy 22:4 ("If you see someone’s donkey or ox fallen on the road, do not ignore it. Help the owner get it to its feet."), Deuteronomy 25:4 ("Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain."), and of course the extending of the Sabbath command to animals in Exodus 20:8-11 and Deuteronomy 5:12-15.
I've got my computer back up and running for the most part. Still some software yet to reinstall and some settings that aren't quite the way I had them before the crash. But at least it looks like I'll be able to go ahead with SoFoBoMo. I've been getting warmed up with some more food photos lately.
Onions are pretty amazing, you know. I've recently finished reading Robert Farrar Capon's The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection, which is a wonderful combination of cookbook and theological essay. In Chapter 2, "The First Session," he guides the reader through a truly spiritual encounter with an onion. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book. I'd been exposed to the onion exercise in a class at Regent once before (The Christian Imagination, taught by -- surprise, surprise -- Loren Wilkinsons). But it was fun to savor the chapter from which the onion experience came.
Some choice excerpts: "Once you are seated, the first order of business is to address yourself to the onion at hand....You will note, to begin with, that the onion is a thing, a being, just as you are. Savor that for a moment." Later: "But look what your onion has done for you: It has given you back the possibility of heaven as a place without encumbering you with the irrelevancy of location."
Still farther on, one of the best sections, worth quoting at length:
"Note once again what you have discovered: an onion is not a sphere in repose. It is a linear thing, a bloom of vectors thrusting upward from base to tip. Stand your onion, therefore, root end down upon the board and see it as the paradigm of life that it is--as one member of the vast living, gravity-defying troop that, across the face of the earth, moves light- and airward as long as the world lasts.
"Only now have you the perspective needed to enter the onion itself. Begin with the outermost layer of paper, or onion-skin. Be careful. In the ordinary processes of cooking, the outer skin of a sound onion is removed by peeling away the immediately underlying layers of flesh with it. It is a legitimate short cut; the working cook cannot afford the time it takes to loosen only the paper. Here, however, it is not time that matters, but the onion. Work gently then, lifting the skin with the point of your knife so as not to cut or puncture the flesh beneath."
Later on: "Perhaps now you have seen at least dimly that the uniquenesses of creation are the result of continuous creative support, of effective regard by no mean lover. He likes onions, therefore they are. The fit, the colors, the smell, the tensions, the tastes, the textures, the lines, the shapes are a response, not to some forgotten decree that there may as well be onions as turnips, but to His present delight--His intimate and immediate joy in all you have seen....With Peter, the onion says, Lord, it is good for us to be here. Yes, says God. Tov. Very good."
Later he touches on his idea which he elsewhere calls oblation: "Man's real work is to look at the things of the world and to love them for what they are. That is, after all, what God does, and man was not made in God's image for nothing. The fruits of his attention can be seen in all the arts, crafts, and sciences....But if man's attention is repaid so handsomely, his inattention costs him dearly. Every time he diagrams something instead of looking at it, every time he regards not what a thing is but what it can be made to mean to him...[r]eality slips away from him; and he is left with nothing but the oldest monstrosity in the world: an idol. Things must be met for themselves. To take them only for their meaning is to convert them into gods--to make them too important, and therefore to make them unimportant altogether. Idolatry has two faults. It is not only a slur on the true God; it is also an insult to true things."
I think a photographer's calling is very connected with this idea of attentiveness to things, of oblation (offering them up to God and to others by really seeing them and loving them).
Ron Reed, in his blog Oblations, quotes the core exposition of this idea of oblation from Capon's chapter "The Oblation of Things" in his book An Offering of Uncles. My church, Point Grey Inter-Mennonite Fellowship, is going to have Ron as a guest speaker on Sunday, Sept 6, to give a version of his talk "Oblation: The Artist's Holy Calling." Lucky us!
I did some thinking about PDF file creation and hosting, as I was coming up with an answer to Billie Mercer's question on the SoFoBoMo Flickr forum.
Here's what I wrote:
If you have CS3, perhaps you have Adobe Acrobat (the full version, not just Acrobat Reader). It comes with Creative Suite. Anyway, if you've got Acrobat, you can combine the separate PDF pages generated by Photoshop CS3 into one multi-page PDF file by starting Acrobat, clicking on "Create PDF" and selecting "From Multiple Files..." then browse to the folder where your files are located.
If you don't have (and don't feel like buying) Acrobat, another easy way to make a PDF file is to create the book in Word first. You can lay out pictures and text there however you like. Then using any of several "print-to-PDF" utilities (such as the free PDFCreator) which you would have installed first, just print from Word as if you're printing to a printer, but select the PDF output instead of your printer.
Now about hosting: Anita has her own website and she has uploaded the PDF file directly to the root folder on her website. That costs money and is non-trivial. However, there are other options that are nearly as good.
1) Try http://freepdfhosting.com (it's free, but you have to register, and you have to make a donation in order to store a PDF file larger than 2 MB which a book of high quality photos probably will be). Pretty straightforward to create an account and upload files. I haven't tried it myself, but I've Googled to find other books hosted on it. The URL will look something like this http://freepdfhosting.com/uploads/413a3e072b.pdf (you can check out that book to see an example of how your book will look).
2) Try the free webspace available through SkyDrive on Microsoft Live Spaces (http://spaces.live.com). Uploading files is pretty straightforward (once you've created your account, navigate in the browser to your public folder and click "Upload Files" then Browse on your hard disk for them), but viewing them isn't quite as smooth as if you had your own webspace. It doesn't show up embedded in the same browser window, but asks whether you want to download the file. And the URLs aren't very nice. But you can store up to 25 GB for free.
3) Try creating a free website on Google Sites (http://sites.google.com). Pretty straightforward to sign up for an account and create a new site. You need to upload your PDF file as an "attachment" to some page in your site (e.g., your home page), but then you can point people to the URL of the file directly. File size limit: 10 MB per attachment.
4) Try uploading the PDF file directly to Google Docs (http://docs.google.com). Like Google Sites, you have to have (or create) a Google account to do this. But once you've got one and are logged in, just click Upload, Browse your computer to find the file, and click "Upload File." Again, the URLs aren't very nice, and there's a bunch of Google Docs framework stuff at the top and right of the window. File size limit: 10 MB per PDF.
None of those solutions is IDEAL, but they're all pretty simple and have varying advantages/disadvantages.
I have realized that I can't just do a Blurb book, because I do want to have a PDF result to post online, and Blurb doesn't give you one. So I'm back to the drawing board planning to either use InDesign (which I'd need to spend some more time learning) or Word. I don't want to have to do the layout twice (both for PDF and for the printed Blurb book), so I'm going to try to do what someone else suggested and just export the individual PDF pages (complete with text and photos) as JPGs and plop them in to Blurb pages one at a time with full bleed. I'd like to try that once before the real thing comes along. I still think I'm going to go with Issuu for the hosting, as I really like its polished looke and page-turning interface.
Another thing I've decided to do, at the recommendation of an artist friend, is to prepare for the actual shooting I'm planning to do over the two weeks of the Food Course by photographing my meals from now until then. I think that not only will that discipline prepare me for the SoFoBoMo task, but it will also prepare me for the contemplative aspects of the Food Course. It will make me more mindful of what and how I'm eating, and it will help me to slow down as I approach my meals. Perhaps I'll be more grateful for them, too.
OK, here goes the first meal. Took 23 shots and kept 6 of them, to tell the story of my dinner.
Hmmm, a full fridge, but nothing interesting to eat...
Besides, I haven't done dishes in weeks and there's gross stuff growing in my big cooking pot...
I guess it's one of those frozen dinner days...
Zap it...
Nice and hot...
Yum!!
The challenge is on again this year, to complete a photography book, from start to finish, in one month. It's called SoFoBoMo (for Solo Photography Book Month) because it's loosely modeled after NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and NaSoAlMo (National Solo Album Month). Last year 170 photographers signed up, and 60 of them completed their books. That shows it is challenging, but not impossible.
This year I will be taking part in a two-week intensive course on the theology of food, called "Food: Creation, Community, and Communion," on Galiano Island, from May 25 to June 5. My intention is to photograph every aspect of this course, the participants, learning, gardening, slaughtering a lamb, cooking, partaking in meals, celebrating communion, etc. This book will be a documentation of the course. I plan to complete it by June 25, 2009. I am even hoping to get credit for doing this as my optional extra project.
Today's photo is of one of the sheep from Hunterston Farm on Galiano Island, with her triplet lambs. Who knows? Maybe one of these lambs will be the one we slaughter for the Food Course. I shudder to think of it. Reminds of me of the time when my mother went to visit her cousins as a kid and she naively asked "where's Blackie?" (their pet lamb). Her cousin blithely replied, "Oh, he's in the freezer." I guess, though, when you live on a farm, that's part of life. I don't know how they choose one to slaughter for this course. It seems such an ominous thing to do, but of course humanely slaughtering an animal on one's own farm for the purpose of food is far better than what they do in commercial slaughterhouses. I'm sure I will be learning more about all of this in this course.
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A fly died on my windowsill a few days ago and was perfectly preserved. I thought it would make a great prop for a photo. (For the past two weekends, I've been hanging around guys who spend enormous amounts of time setting up perfect lighting for a shot for a film, so the idea of doing studio set-up didn't seem as odious to me as it once did.)
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know by now that I enjoy humorous juxtapositions in my photos. So I thought of the classic joke: "Waiter, what's this fly doing in my soup?" "I think he's doing the breast stroke." I made some homemade cream of chicken soup out of the bones from that Hunterston Farm chicken. My intent was to eat it myself, but I decided I could "waste" one bowl for this staged shot and give it to Cricket (minus the fly) afterwards.
I carefully picked up the fly on a piece of paper so as not to damage its pristine wings and brittle rigor mortis legs. I set up the camera on a tripod with the right lighting for the soup bowl, and then slid the fly into place. Didn't want to put him there too soon, or he might have gotten a bit soggy. As it was, he flipped over on his back when I first dropped him in the soup, but I was able to right him without getting any goop on his wings. Then I shot away, messing around with framing and depth of field until I got it just the way I wanted it. Be sure to click on the photo to zoom in so you can see the fly in all its beautiful green glory..jpg)
Cricket liked the soup, by the way. She seems to be having a bit of an Indian summer of her life now. Ever since that chicken heart (and the phosphoric acid that the homeopathic vet had me start her on a couple of days ago), she's really been perking up. She took herself for a little walk down the sidewalk today and I had to go follow her to keep her from going in the street. That's the most spunk she's had in quite a while. I think she's up for her canine water therapy session tomorrow, so we're going to go for it. Here's my favorite picture of her and me in the dog pool where we're meeting Cindy tomorrow.
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We used to have a game we played in our family when I was a kid called "This is the pepper." I cannot find any reference to this game anywhere on the Internet, so we must have been somewhat unusual. But I'm quite certain we didn't make it up. Anyone else ever heard of this game? You play it seated around the dinner table. Someone starts by taking the pepper shaker and passing it to the next person, saying "This is the pepper." The person receiving it asks, "The what?" The passer replies, "The pepper." The response is "Oh, the pepper!" Then person 2 passes it on to person 3 in the same manner. However, by the time person 3 asks "The what?" person 2 has already "forgotten" what it is and has to turn back to person 1 with "The what?" The answer is passed back around the table ("The pepper...The pepper.") to person 3. And so it continues around and around the table for as long as you can stand it. The heads turn back and forth rhythmically to face the people being addressed, making the whole thing a rather dance-like routine. To add extra fun and complication, you can get another pepper going around in the opposite direction, and see if you can keep from getting confused when it's time to pass the pepper to one person while also saying "The what?" to him about the other pepper he just passed to you. You can actually play the game with any object you want, but it's always "the pepper" no matter what you're passing. Very silly indeed. And somewhat of a tongue-twister, or brain-twister. As if our brains weren't twisted enough already to have played a game like that for entertainment...
Now what does all this have to do with today's photograph? Oh, the pepper! I'm no Edward Weston, for sure. But I love the colors and shapes of bell peppers. The red, yellow, and green ones always make me want to buy one of each (they actually come in a traffic-light trio package at my grocery store). I guess it must be because I like traffic lights. But also, their shapes conjure up all kinds of fun creatures in the imagination: elephants, etc. I'm glad they leave the big schnozzes on in the grocery store. They are lovely to look at, not to mention the fact that they make great handles.
Piles of produce in the market are always inviting to photograph, but particularly peppers. It's hard to get the resulting images to look as appetizing as the originals. I mostly like to play with the reptitions of shapes, and come in close. Here is another photographer's take on the theme, at topleftpixel.
