So today, the 26th of May, marks one week until my sofobomo book has to be completed and submitted. Thankfully, I’m nearly there.

I decided, for some reason that has evaded me since I began the project, to do it the ‘interesting way’. Perhaps a bit of an old school method. Yep, decided to do the whole thing on film. *Sigh*

I’ve all but finished the processing now. Well, I say processing when what I actually mean is dust & misc crap removal. Much of it anyway. I don’t have the time, patience or inclination to remove all of it as I’m sure anyone that’s scanned film in the past will understand. It’s only now, that I’m done with the actual photos and beginning to work on the layout, that I can look back at the last couple of weeks and almost smile. Almost…

I shot five (if I remember correctly) rolls of film. Ilford Pan F+ 50. I bought a whole load of it before the project started in anticipation that I might do something sofobomoish with it. Perhaps read the previous post to understand in some way why I chose to complete the project on film instead of choosing the much easier digital route. I even got it developed in a timely manner. Something was bound to go wrong. I got it scanned a week or so later. Yes, procrastination won out again. Then, a couple of days after that, I dropped my laptop. Wait, did I say something had to go wrong?

Screwed the screen right up and still haven’t got it fixed. Thankfully Julie had a monitor hanging around that I was able to connect to the laptop so I could complete the work in lightroom. It looks like I’m not going to be getting the screen fixed for another 2/3 weeks so that wonderful monitor will allow me to complete the entire thing. Laptops are great, until they go wrong. Apple laptops with ridiculously expensive parts are great too, but have a way of going very wrong, very quickly. Especially when you allow them to take a dive off the couch when you get up to make toast. Next time, I’m building a compact desktop machine instead.

So one week to go and thirty something pages to layout before wrapping it up all in a PDF file and submitting it. Need to come up with a name. Hell, need to come up with a format, an image order and just about everything else. It helps immensely that I completed my first book only a month or so before beginning this one. Otherwise I’d have been freaking out for the last week or so. Also helps greatly that there’s no printing involved in this one. Getting everything right and proofing for print was a big part of what I did last time around. Time consuming. I may well print this time too, but at least it’s not a requirement of sofobomo itself.

Last but not least, I’m happy with the images. I left that part out didn’t I? With all the fecking around, dev’ing, scanning, processing and whatnot, it helps to be actually pleased with what you got out of the camera. I can see how I’ll do a few things differently next time around (I didn’t just say that, did I?) but overall and with now a bit less than one week to go, I’m ready for the finish. If that’ll still be the case in five or six days time remains to be seen however.

Rocks, rocks and more rocks. Insert a “Father Ted” reference or ten. Also, flowers… In the rocks. It could only be one place. Or, maybe two. Three maximum. Got back last night from a few days spent in & around The Burren over the long weekend. Always a fantastic place.

Thankfully, the weather played nicely and it didn’t actually rain (much) until Monday. By then it was time to start the long drive back to Dublin anyway. The reasons for going down were roughly as follows;

1. To see the flowers that are unique to the area
2. To get away from Dublin for the long weekend.
3. To get some content for sofobomo.

Yeah, my book is going to be largely (and by largely, I mean totally) based on the landscape of The Burren. That’d be the book that doesn’t current exist. That book. All shot on my most favourite (currently) of black & white films, Ilford PanF Plus 50. It’s lovely.

Saw the place with new eyes and got some feckin great foreground rock photos. Well, I assume I did. Going to have to wait until the film is out of the chemicals later on to see the actual results. Then it’s down to a few possibly hectic weeks of scanning and laying out pages before the deadline. My deadline. 2nd June.

The idea of produce an (albeit smaller) book in one month is an interesting undertaking. I’m sure I’ll get it done and submitted in time, I’m just not too sure what kind of state it’ll be in when the final PDF is uploaded.

The previous book I worked on took what seemed an eternity of selecting images, doing layouts, revising those layouts, further revising layouts, coming up with a page order, redoing that page order and well, you get the idea. I’ll have to get off my arse and blog a bit about that first book project too.

But I think my original point was that The Burren is amazing. Go there. While you’re there, look out for that mad house outside Lisdoonvarna with all the crazy concrete animal sculptures in the garden.