Ordinary Pictures

I was rooting around in Paul Butzi’s web site last week looking for some Jobo development times. Having found what I wanted, I eventually ended up at his excellent blog where I discovered SoFoBoMo, or Solo Photo Book Month. What’s that, you ask? Well, see the full rules here, but basically you get a month to take pictures, pick at least 35 and produce a photo book—either hard copy or electronic. It sounded to me like a great idea so I signed up. I chose May 1-31, the last possible time slot according to the rules.

I have a few ideas floating around in my mind about this project. One is to do it all using Polaroid 600 film or possibly Type 55 in honor of the recent announcement that Polaroid was ceasing manufacture of instant films in the next few months. If I did this, I would scan the original images and produce an electronic book (pdf). Another idea was to take a trip early in May, and try to get 35 good photos on location. My feeling is that I’ll likely stick closer to home.

The prospect of producing 35 decent photographs in about 3 weeks–leaving one week for book production–is daunting to me. I’m not what you’d call a prolific photographer. I’d guess I produce about at most a dozen what I consider “good” photos in a year. I’ll give it my best shot, but expect that the mediocre photos will be elevated a bit by proximity to hopefully better ones. It will definitely be interesting working under such tight constraints.

Anyway, I encourage everyone to go to Paul’s site and sign up: http://photomusings.wordpress.com/2008/01/18/solo-photo-book-month