Another month has gone by and I have made, more and more progress on my book. For those who follow this blog then you have seen that I hired an editor, that the manuscript has come back to me and that I am now in final revisions and laying out the book.
I wish I could say the process gets easier after letting a stranger read, correct, and make suggestions because that was a hurled in itself— not because of the editor but because of my own anxiety about letting it be seen. Honestly the editing process turned out well there were tips given, corrections made, but there wasn’t anything in the way of cuts or tough suggestions.
Going the self-publishing route means I am spending an exorbitant amount of time on the look of the book and that how it lays out, how the cover appear, the text, and all the fun extras is in. my hands. My inner perfectionist has acknowledged there will be mistakes, and we can only do so much but I want to get the first draft as close to perfection as possible for when I order a proof copy.
I currently have half the book layed out and book is sitting at 100 pages. Since I am a photographer sharing photographs is important to me and I have opted to share anywhere from 1-4 per chapter at the end of each chapter. I unfortunately have something over 100,000 photos in my archives so I can not share them all no matter how much I wish I could.
“Much earlier I discussed taking leaps of faith in terms of adventures and opportunities you will encounter as a photographer, but what happens when you’re ready to put your work out there in other ways?
I’m talking about publications, competitions and the ever-popular goal of a viral image for follower growth. There comes a time when the inner creative is ready to compare their work against others in the industry and see how they fare.
For me, that point came earlier than many of the other photographers I have met. This stems from my high school years and an art teacher who was all about having us put our work out there, having us enter competitions no matter how our work performs. When your education involves pushing you to reach for goals, your subconscious latches on to it and it becomes an integrated piece of your personality. Well at least that’s what happened to me.
I never did well in those competitions we entered in high school. I could draw and paint but never to perfection, there were always flaws, always. For me, that was to be expected, I didn’t have a natural artistic talent for fine arts, in fact, at the age of eight years old I decided I wanted to be able to create so I set about teaching myself and I was decent. There wasn’t much I couldn’t do, if I put in the work.
This same teacher is the one I credit with putting the camera back into my hands, for my discovery that photography was my medium, but I didn’t enter photographic competitions in high school. I used the camera as a tool for my art, as were the requirements for my course at the time. Part of the requirements that year for was to use the camera to capture anything we wanted to create. The intention being so that we would create wholly original artworks.
I fell in love with the camera, it was taking the images for my art that made me realize I could realize my artistic dreams in a digital format. I had a natural talent with a camera, a connection to creating art in a digital format was easier than fine art ever was. It felt like I didn’t have to work as hard to prove myself against others when it came to using a camera, and that easily peaked an interest in the medium with the same ferocity I had for the fine arts as an eight year old.
In my art class, I was one of several good artists but I didn’t have the natural talent and the ease of the few great students. When the cameras came into to play, I definitely felt the playing field even out. Since we could only work from our own photographs, the better they were, the better the potential for our pieces.
I loved photography so I bought a camera and the rest was history. My art teacher gave me the confidence and the drive to continuously put myself and my work out there. I had already put my artwork into the world and lost many competitions, I had built the thick skin necessary for the photographic world.”