Four days later, the book arrived. I opened it with great reverence and looked at what I had done. The reproduction is first class and the quality of the book is too. I will do a few things differently next time including using a smaller typeface for the captions and having fewer images going over the gutter.
Looking back, the second hardest thing to do was to decide on the order of the pictures. By far the hardest was choosing the cover.
The cover. What a tough decision. It's like choosing between your children, like saying to all of the others "I like your brother/sister more than you". Of course the actual decision should be about which works best. Which child is the cleverest, which picture fits the cover format more successfully. The picture that I ended up choosing is the oldest picture in the book and it is a black & white rendition of an original colour transparency sot all the way back in 1994. Poetically, it was the last job that I shot as a freelancer before taking a staff job at the end of January 1994. The client that I shot for commissioned everything in colour and then shifted pictures to mono only if they were going on a mono page.
The picture is a portrait of Conservative Member of Parliament (and then Secretary of State for Wales) John Redwood being interviewed by a reporter. The "unusual" hand gesture which falls on the back cover of my new folio was just the minister counting out his plan of action on an issue of the day and not giving me the finger. It's always been a popular picture and putting the oldest child on the cover feels right! |
