Nihon Ken PhotoBook?
Alright guys, had an idea that I thought my be fun & productive 
Everyone know about those "photobooks" they have in Japan? [ Like this one here. ] Well I thought, what about if we make our own?
We have enough owners on here and a nice variety of the different breeds / dogs to make a really nice book full of different nihon ken.
Don't know about the rest of you all, but I know I'd love to have something like this on my bookshelf!
Essentially, everyone could submit pictures of their pups, & a certain # will be selected for being published in the book. Then, the book will be sold to everyone [ like the calendar / cafepress items ] & all funds / proceeds would go to the Nihon Ken Forum Fund & helping to keep the forum up & running. [ yes, the forum does cost money to keep up! ]
So, what do you all think? Any interest at all?
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This will also be a good opportunity for those of you who want to learn photography a bit more
Getting out there & being pro-active in taking photos will help you learn a ton! & of course, we have some amazing photographers on here who can help you out
~--
I know of a nice "print-on-demand" company, kind of like cafepress, but they do books, who I want to use to compile the book. They make some really great quality stuff at a really nice affordable price. You can check them out at Lulu.com.
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Questions
How much is the book going to cost?
- When I select the publishing options, I'm going to try to keep it as minimal as possible. I'd like to aim for the $20 - $30 range, so we get a good number of pages / photos in & a decent quality. If that seems too expensive tho, please list your ideal price range.
Will it be hardcover or paperback?
- Paperback, in order to keep costs down. But don't be alarmed, these books are in no way "Flimsy."
Will it be in colour or black & white?
- Colour for sure!
When will this "project" start?
- As soon as I know if there's enough interest. Then, there will be an "open deadline" to submit photos. The project will probably go for a while, I want to make sure we have enough quality pictures to make the book really worthwhile
When will the "project" end?
- There will be no specfic ending date. When we have enough nice photos, I'll put out a 2-week warning to submit any last photos someone might have.
I'm not good with photography...I don't think I should submit...
- No! If you have no interest because you think your photos aren't that great, you should still try! Some people on here do amazing post-processing work that can make an "ok" photo look amazing! & again, this is a good opportunity to learn how to shoot! This will be a community effort, where we all help each other out
What japanese breeds will the photobook include?
- Shiba, Akita, Kai, Shikoku, Kishu & [ hopefully ] Hokkaido
I have another question!
- Ask away!
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Comments, questions, concerns, ideas...shoot! ~
Everyone know about those "photobooks" they have in Japan? [ Like this one here. ] Well I thought, what about if we make our own?
We have enough owners on here and a nice variety of the different breeds / dogs to make a really nice book full of different nihon ken.
Don't know about the rest of you all, but I know I'd love to have something like this on my bookshelf!
Essentially, everyone could submit pictures of their pups, & a certain # will be selected for being published in the book. Then, the book will be sold to everyone [ like the calendar / cafepress items ] & all funds / proceeds would go to the Nihon Ken Forum Fund & helping to keep the forum up & running. [ yes, the forum does cost money to keep up!
] So, what do you all think? Any interest at all?
---
This will also be a good opportunity for those of you who want to learn photography a bit more
Getting out there & being pro-active in taking photos will help you learn a ton! & of course, we have some amazing photographers on here who can help you out ~--
I know of a nice "print-on-demand" company, kind of like cafepress, but they do books, who I want to use to compile the book. They make some really great quality stuff at a really nice affordable price. You can check them out at Lulu.com.
---
Questions
How much is the book going to cost?
- When I select the publishing options, I'm going to try to keep it as minimal as possible. I'd like to aim for the $20 - $30 range, so we get a good number of pages / photos in & a decent quality. If that seems too expensive tho, please list your ideal price range.
Will it be hardcover or paperback?
- Paperback, in order to keep costs down. But don't be alarmed, these books are in no way "Flimsy."
Will it be in colour or black & white?
- Colour for sure!
When will this "project" start?
- As soon as I know if there's enough interest. Then, there will be an "open deadline" to submit photos. The project will probably go for a while, I want to make sure we have enough quality pictures to make the book really worthwhile
When will the "project" end?
- There will be no specfic ending date. When we have enough nice photos, I'll put out a 2-week warning to submit any last photos someone might have.
I'm not good with photography...I don't think I should submit...
- No! If you have no interest because you think your photos aren't that great, you should still try! Some people on here do amazing post-processing work that can make an "ok" photo look amazing! & again, this is a good opportunity to learn how to shoot!
This will be a community effort, where we all help each other out What japanese breeds will the photobook include?
- Shiba, Akita, Kai, Shikoku, Kishu & [ hopefully ] Hokkaido
I have another question!
- Ask away!
----
Comments, questions, concerns, ideas...shoot! ~
Comments
When the project is open for submissions, you should specify a minimum file size so none of the pictures appear too pixelly. Even if you don't see it on screen or with your own printer, depending on how the company prints, it could look really bad once in the book.
Also, is there a limit of how many submissions per person?
Since this is going to be a physical book vs a calendar that might get thrown away, I'm really hoping to make it really nice quality.
I wont put a per-person limit, I want people to submit as many photos as they can so we have a good library to choose from, BUT I will say we will limit the amount of pictures-per-person that actually goes INTO the book.
So, for example, [ & these are just rough numbers, we wont know how many photos the book will have til we get a good amount of submissions ] if you submitted 50 photos, we'd let you put 3 in the book. If someone else submitted 10 photos, we'd still only allow 3 to get published. Make sense?
Steph - Yes! I've noticed everyone's gotten really into photographing their dogs, which is what sparked this idea. That & the fact that the japanese photobook of nihon ken is kind of hard to come by. ~
If it is a NK Forum Photobook- such that it would include members' non nihon ken dogs too, then I'd contribute photos, but if it's meant to be a Nihon Ken book, I wont.
But I'd still buy it.
Maybe the book could have sections or chapters, and there could be a chapter in the end for "Honorary non nihon ken pups"
EDIT: Also, the $20-$30 is a pretty average price for this kind of book. I've seen and purchased other similar type books (photographs and artwork) for $25-$50.
Sorry to ramble. I think that it's an interesting project, but I think that if we were to put an effort into something like this, we should do it properly from a technical standpoint (in terms of photo submissions and typesetting), so specific guidelines (akin to the ones posted on how to post photos etc.) should be listed if there is enough interest.
Just for context, I speak as someone in the book publishing industry.
As for a separate chapter, perhaps nihon-ken mixes would be interesting to people.
On a slightly off topic note, how many hokkaido are there in this country? I'm sort of curious as I ran into a woman the other day when I was walking Violet. She got very excited and told me and her teenage daughter how nostalgic seeing Violet made her. It turns out that her family had a Hokkaido (at least I think that's what it was, she said they were called Ainu dogs then) when she was growing up and they were one of two families in the country to own one. I wish I could have spoken to her longer since I was really curious. Anyway, never having seen an Ainu dog, I just wondered how much resemblance there was.
Janie also made a good point about careful submission/photo prep instructions.
@Janie: As for Hokkas in the US, as I understand it there are only three dogs with two families. There is a lawyer in CO with two of them, and a forum member (Jamie, I don't remember he username) has one. Unfortunately Jamie hasn't been active on the forum in probably close to a year. :-(
ETA: Here are some of the threads on Kangai, Jamie's hokka.
I also think violet-in-seville made a very important point; to do this properly, we need high res images, preferably RAW or uncompressed tif. On the forum we may publish 72dpi, but the images should be available in high res to get sufficient information for print. If photographers have more knowledge about photography and dogs, but maybe less experienced in post processing, please don't do it. Once certain things are done, the image maybe damaged for the purpose like here. So put the 72dpi's here and after selection keep the high res image ready. We might have to collect them all at an other website, since high res images, uncompressed can be 10 or more Mb's each.
Plus, some Print on Demand companies have guidelines to submitted files that aren't what is traditionally used in the printing industry(Cafepress prefers jpeg & png in RGB colors for example), so we would have to follow the guidelines the printer sets instead of our own.
Lulu.com does offer ftp transfer, which is perfect for large file sizes. For photo books, the file types that they accept are JPG, GIF and PNG. ( http://www.lulu.com/en/help/upload_filetypes ) I think TIFs are only acceptable when embedded into a PDF, word document or similar. PDFs they seem to accept only for the cover or as mostly text. They also advise not to change the colorspace, so if it is saved as an RGB, then leave it as such.
I guess my question is, will this be a photo book with no text (and I include captions in that). From what I can see the photo book referred to at Lulu is just photos, and no ability to have text or captions.
This is what was posted on Lulu's site: "Lulu provides tools to publish and sell products online, but you are responsible for the formatting and layout of your work before you publish it on Lulu."
I guess my point about TIF files was because I was under the impression that the layout was going to be done by someone who was willing to do it, in which case, one really would want to work with TIF files rather than JPEG if at all possible.
I guess the following are the key questions:
- How much interest is there in having a photo book
- Is there someone with the time/desire to oversee the process of photo selection (however that is handled)
- Will there be text and/or photo captions
- Is there someone (or a small group) willing to work on layout and composition, and have the programs to do so (Photoshop, Indesign, etc.)
As for photo stuff, I think because your camera does 72dpi but scales them up, they would be fine once manipulated properly. I think if photos are submitted everyone should submit them in their original form unless they're really knowledgeable about the process, but having size and DPI guidelines would be useful in helping to get the best possible image quality (since some people will have cameras that do have the option).
I pulled the excerpts below from our art FAQ. I think having something similar (a set of tips to get the best possible results from the camera) would be useful.
This is only my opinion (and being obsessed with books and working in the industry that I do, I'm pretty biased). As I said before, I think that it's a very cool idea, but my vote on it is that it would be something that I would like carefully planned out (again if there is the demand for the book, and knowledgeable people willing to donate their time) and ideally with resources for technical help so that the widest number of people can submit photos and the book will look as good as possible.
From an art FAQ:
JPG (or JPEG) is generally acceptable. Though it is a very popular format due to its ability to compress to a very small file size, JPG compression
scrambles the images: the higher the compression, the smaller the file size and the lower the image quality. In addition, JPGs deteriorate
with every resave; if you intend to work on a JPG, save it first in a stable format like TIF or PSD before doing any work.
When compression artifacts are present in other image formats, it is most likely because they have been converted from a JPEG file at some point in the image history.
Here are some basic tips for digital photos:
Use the highest available resolution setting on your camera; you can always get rid of the extra resolution later.
Use optical zoom only. Avoid using digital zoom; it is based on interpolation.
Digital photos are often generated in JPG format. Do not set your camera to use the high file compression; see discussion of JPG format
on p. 6. Similarly, if you intend to work on your photos, resave them in a stable format first (e.g., TIF).
Keep the original photos if you are revising them or if you are placing them in other programs.
Inspect your images for digital noise. This is a digital photo artifact that appears as randomly scattered specks. Slight noise visible only at high magnification does not present a problem. Strong digital noise is unacceptable. It is usually the result of insufficient lighting or a mechanical problem.
ETA: Steph is correct about the photo book. I'm clearly terrible at navigating the Lulu website (Brian found the photobook templates too, and a text add is possible). So my last point about layout and composition isn't necessary. It's possible to use the template. I think it would be nice to do a unique layout rather than using their templates, but templates are available.
Steph, that's really wonderful of you to offer your time like that (and your aesthetic sensibility).
Somewhat random question - Were people interested in submitting photos more interested in submitting old photos or new? I think I actually unjustly assumed that new photos would be taken since the old ones were already considered or used for the calendars.
Dave - Thanks for the information on Hokkaido and the link (I'm enjoying reading the old threads). I was really curious. I did not realize that the number in this country was so low! It was a surprise to come across someone who had owned one so (relatively) long ago so I was sort of curious to see if the numbers had changed.
I'd be happy to contribute to layout and stuff, I have Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop. Illustrator and InDesign can save pdf files ( which can be helpful! )
With these print on demand places, I would keep everything as 'simple' as possible and just make it an image file that contains no fonts (outlined text instead) and no embedded images. The more that is involved with the file, the more things can go wrong (missing fonts, misplaced images). Lulu does send a digital proof, but even a PDF proof (with embedded fonts) can look different on your computer than on theirs.
Justin (dilly) has a hokka as well, one of Robert's...though he hasn't been on in a while. I've been bugging him via email so hopefully he comes on to post pictures soon.
o1. I am not going to be using the "photobook" template from the lulu.com website. Why? Because if we only do a 20 page book it will be $25 [ base price ] Which, IMHO, is not enough bang for the buck & leaves little room for the Forum Fund to get any kickback. So, I will be compiling the book with their regular book editor, which is much cheaper, will get us more photos / pages, & will allow the forum fund to get some kickback. [ I'd really love to aim for something like a 50-75 page book vs 20 pages ]
o2. However, despite the fact that I'm not using the photobook "template," the NK Photobook will have a similar theme. As I said in the first post, we are essentially making a book similar to the japanese one that you can see here. There are scans from the inside of the book, so take a look! This is what I'm aiming for: Simple, Clean, Organized, Elegant, & TONS of fun nihon ken photos
o3. As others have said, & as much as I love our honorary nihon ken here, this needs to be a Nihon Ken only book. After all, people other than forum members may purchase this book, & we don't want to get them confused as to why non-nihon ken are there
o4. As far as help with the actual book itself, [ template / publishing / layout wise ] this is something I've been working on the past couple of weeks. So, at this point in time, no extra help is needed with that in particular, tho I appreciate everyone's willingness to
o5. As much as I understand everyone panicking about TIFFs, PSDs, etc. really guys, take it easy! LOL While we do want a nice, quality, book we need to do what is in the range of acceptable & be open to all forum members who want to contribute.
Not everyone's camera can shoot in RAW, not everyone has a 12MP camera, etc. etc. The way I have the layout is that there is room for smaller images that can be compiled together on one page, this way, no one gets left out because they don't have the technology to keep up. [ & FTR, I've seen amazing photos taken with the cheapest cameras, & that have printed really well ]
o6. Since this is a photobook, I want to limit the text as much as possible. As they say, a Picture is Worth a Thousands Words...this is a good time to prove that! I'd like to keep people focused on the photos, & more importantly, the dogs in them ;D
o7. About the text that might go into the book...Sukoshi's Mum suggested we organize the photos some way, one suggestion I really liked was to organize it by breed. What do you all think of having a "breed intro" for each breed? It'd be about one page introduction followed by the various breed pages.
EX: A one page intro on Shikoku, followed by the shikoku pictures. Then, a one page intro on Kai Ken, followed by all the kai pictures, etc. etc. etc. We'd also want some text to go on the back-cover of the book, & possibly an "introduction to the book."
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So if anyone wants to volunteer to write-up the "breed introductions" / "book intro" / "backcover text" please say so! While I'm great with graphic design, I'm not too gifted in the art of writing, so I'd like to leave the text bit to someone else
Feel free to post the text in this thread so we can comment / add / contribute
Thanks guys!
I think that submissions for the text in the book should have it's own thread which would make it simple and organized so as to keep the focus on what is written.
"o3. As others have said, & as much as I love our honorary nihon ken here, this needs to be a Nihon Ken only book."
Don't worry people with honorary nihon ken, maybe we can bug Osy to reuse the template to make a "Dogs of the Forum" book containing both nihon ken and non nihon ken:) Ooo, maybe a "Best forum pics and meet up events of 20**" book.
"After all, people other than forum members may purchase this book, & we don't want to get them confused as to why non-nihon ken are there
Since non forumers may purchase this book, does this mean it'll have an isbn and potentially distributed through bokk sellers (Amazon, Borders)? Or are you planning on just advertising it and pointing where people can buy it?
Also, if you do plan on wider distribution, I think we should make sure to get everyone submitting pics to give permission to use these pics. Like on the submission thread, have the original post say "By submitting/posting a picture to this discussion you hereby give us permission to publish and print bla blah blah" or have it where when anyone posts their picture on the submission thread they must type at the end "I (name), hereby give permission to have my submitted pictures printed blah blah blah".
Yes, a disclaimer is a must, I think. & Whilst I don't think we want to go to the trouble of adding an ISBN at this point in time, you never know, it may be something we want to do later
& yes, I'm going to advertise this book like crazy, hopefully others will do the same
& even tho there are many people who "post" on the forums, there are MUCH more who don't! So they're part of our target audience. [ which is, all nihon ken lovers!
As far as credits go, I was asked this on the Shiba-side thread. They wanted to know if we were including the dog's breeders in the credits. This was my response:
There will be a "credits" section, however, it will not include the breeder / rescue. [ the credits will include the dog's name, owner's name, breed, & page #'s the photos are on ]
The reason we want to exclude the actual breeders is because this book is not about giving breeders free advertising. Essentially, by including the breeder we are advertising their kennel. Whilst some people have gotten their dogs from reputable breeders, others have gotten theirs from Back Yard Breeders, Puppy Mills, & Pet stores.
Is their anything wrong with BYB, Puppy Mill, or Pet Store puppies? Nope! They're still, of course, great little dogs! But, we don't want to advertise / support those kind of places. & of course, for fairness sake, we need to either include ALL the breeders, or none at all, so we're going to opt for none.
So in short, we will have a credits page. People who also decide to contribute in other ways [ for example, extra post-processing work for photos, or typing up the book / breed chapter intros ] will also get credited
I also have some experience in print-production (newspaper, but I'm sure a lot of my skills will carry over). So if you'd like, I can help with that as well.
I don't think that anyone here would do anything, but as this book may be purchased by a wider audience, I think it would be good to have proper documentation concerning copyright just so anyone whose photos are chosen have legal protection in the event that some person out there does something that they shouldn't with the photos (such as distribute or use in another publication or post it online etc.). You want it to be clear that these photos are not in the public domain.
A brief letter submitted by each of the contributors based on a template with the specifics filled in for each individual contributor should work. If you opt to go this route I'd be happy to draw up a formal template. I've dealt with permissions enough in the course of my job that I feel confident in crafting something that would legally hold up, should it ever come to that.
My only suggestion for the submission template is to make sure it covers "all images submitted" for each person. [ For example, if Kyla submitted 10 images, she'd only submit 1 "release form" ] just so that each person doesn't have to submit a release for each photo they send in. [ if that made sense ]
& the copyright page in the back sounds great!
If it's enough time, it'd be great if the template was finished within the next week or two so we can start taking photos
Oh, & since there are going to be people writing a small intro to the breeds [ I'm thinking maybe something like 500 words ] do you think we need a copyright template for those submissions too?
Kyla -- Great to have you on board!
In case I haven't made it clear, we're going to need 6 "breed introductions" [ possibly only 5 if we don't get hokkaido pictures
^^^ Of course we don't expect ONE person to do all of this, so hopefully the work can be divided amongst several volunteers
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With everyone working together, this should be a KILLER book!
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Anyone else have other suggestions? ~
Such a minor detail in spelling, but a big difference in meaning lol.
I think I got your posts crossed haha.
That's cool tho! ~
Would you focus mostly on photos of the best specimens of the breed or all nihon ken are invited to participate?