I produced my first book on macro-insect photography in my first year at University and it was a great sucess.
The idea of my book was relatively simple in the fact that it would consist of two key areas, a documentary body of work about The Manchester Museum and The Entomology Collection. This would incorporate establishing shots of the museum.
During my time at the University and the museum, I have been on the lookout for interesting angles to get a shot of the whole building from. Most of the angles that I have seen in recent publicity and on the University website have been shot from much closer and looking straight up at the museum. They are all very similar and not particularly eye-catching. I decided to do something different and shot this from across the road in the rain from as far back as i could possibly get.
I think that the man walking into the shot gives the image a little more depth. his approach to the University direct the viewers eye in the same direction.
A couple of other interesting images that I chose to use in my book.
I liked the idea of using the sign in my book to start that chapter. Initially was much smaller on the page with the same title underneath. I got rid of the title and made the image full-bleed and it is visually way more effective now.
The cover of my book. As the Cockroach is one of my final images and is an integral part of my portrait theme. I chose to use it as the cover image.
The initial working title of my book was ''Invertebrate Portraits'' by Richard Meftah.
After asking people what they thought of the title, it wasn't very well received as it was quite hard to pronounce. I opted to change it to ''Almost Human'' as this is a good reference again to the portraiture element which has been so fundamental throughout the course of this project.
It also allowed me to have a sub-heading which I think sounds better than just a title on its own.
I have intentionally kept the front-page relatively small. This is an informed design choice which reflects the way that I am looking at the perception of scale within the insect world and having the insect looking much bigger than the title is a good way to emphasise that.
The above 2 pages show the screen in Blurb where you can see all of your book pages. This is invaluable in altering the order of my book.
A page of special thanks. Several people have really helped me throughout the course of this module and I wanted to use this opportunity to thank them.
A little introduction about myself as the author. I just explained about my interests in natural history and how they relate to my photographic practice.
About the project. This is basically my artists statement which explains the theory behind my project.
When I initially placed my text, I wasn't sure if it was too big.
I discussed this with my tutor and we agreed that I should reduce the point size.
After a few adjustments and a few all-important test prints which were done at the actual 10x8 size of my book. I was happy with the amended text size.
As part of the documentary series on this project, I spent a lot of time looking at the spectacular collection of natural history books. As well as showing some of the images in a smaller format. When discussed with my tutor, we decided that the image quality of the shots should be good enough to allow me to show them as a double-page spread.
I mocked up these 3 and out of these, the bottom one is the least effective as the depth of field is really shallow. I will only use one of these in my final
book design.
An important aspect of my documentary project was Dmitri.
He kindly allowed me to take this shot of him as he was working. I like the way that his gaze is directed to the text about him on the opposite page.
The text came from a series of short questions that I wrote out in advance of one of the days that I spent at the Museum. Dmitri very kindly provided me with some great answers which I was able to use in the section about him and also in another section about the entomology department.
As Dmitri's specialism is in Arachnids, I chose to show some of the images of preserved spiders that I had found. I was particularly fascinated by the bottle on the right of the second page which was labelled in 1898 !
I have tried a lot of different page layouts and have found from previous experience that the best way of seeing which layout works best is to just design a few and see which is visually the most appealing. I also wanted to include the statement about portraiture to reinforce what I am trying to achieve. Initially there was more text but on discussion with my tutor, we decided that this simple statement was effective in it own right.
I also want to show some of the incredible detail that I have been able to capture during this project and have included these as I think that they compliment the portraits and help to keep the flow of the book interesting.
Another idea is to compare subjects side-by-side, again reinforcing the ideal of portraiture, of looking at the subtle differences between similar subjects.
At the end of the book. I intend to show an edit of my best images, I will use the bet 8 or 10 images depending on how they look together.
I experimented with having text on the opposite page but think that this is distracting.
After trying an image on its own next to a black page, I really do not think that this works at all. Again, referring back to my concept of portraiture and comparison of similar subjects, it makes sense to me to show comparisons of similar specimens next to each other for direct comparison.
I have decided that this is how I will have the final layout of my book.
The only other choice is whether the images are full-bleed or with a border.
After a lot of designing and a lot of experimentation and pondering, I feel that this is a really good way to show my final images. I plan to show 5 or 6 similar pairs of insects in this layout at the
end of my book with a black border to frame my subjects. the framing again is another reference to to my notion of portraiture.
The crop of these images has also been a very serious consideration in the final production of this book.
Throughout my research, I have looked at and considered portrait photography a great deal.
Cropping my images in such a way that I am just concentrating on the faces of my subjects seems to be the correct approach that best suits this body of work.
I have experimented in great depth with different levels of cropping both wide and tight and feel quite strongly that a loser/wider crop really detracts away from the idea of using focus-stacking to generate such high levels of detail.
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