nisaa

nisaa @ 2010-07-03T10:14:00

2010-07-03T17:15:06Z

IMG_2935
Originally uploaded by nisaatbl.

This is from yesterday's shoot around the former Alameda naval base.

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sofobomo progress

2010-06-30T16:31:40Z

I think I'm about a week into it and I've got 5 images I may use so far. I plopped them into the Booksmart template and will leave them there until I have more photos and decide for sure.

Here's the theme that's sort of emerging: things with cobwebs and crumbled things (not food, but statues and not necessarily ancient ruins either, just things that were whole and now aren't).

So far, I've mostly taken photos in my neighborhood. I've read about the abandoned hospital or dentist office in Alameda that was creepy and potentially haunted but also burned down last year.

If anyone has any suggestions for places near Alameda and Oakland for me to photograph, let me know. And I'll be in New York near New Windsor, Pomona and Nyack for four days in July so if you happen to know any places near there, it might be hard for me to get around but if there's a must-see thing, I'll find a way. I don't remember any abandoned places near Nyack but I grew up near there a very long time ago and I'm sure it's changed a lot.

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To SoFoBoMo or not?

2010-06-23T05:33:30Z

A friend asked me on Saturday if I was going to do this again this year. I'm not sure. I made two photo books last year: the one for SoFoBoMo and the one for my niece's birthday (I still don't have a copy of that book myself.)

If I decide to do it, I'd better get cracking. There are 38 days left and I'll need 31 to do it in. Maybe I'll do some macro stuff. There's a disintegrated gargoyle statue in the backyard that I've been meaning to shoot and this would give me an excuse to do that.

Hmmm . . .

Of course, as soon as I wrote this, I registered for this year's project.

Here's where mine will be:
http://sofobomo.org/book-333

I'll use this journal again to keep track of what I'm doing.

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Sofobomo PDF

2009-06-23T05:18:11Z

You can download the complete PDF proof of my SoFoBoMo book here:
http://www.joedecker.net/denise/mychosenfamily.pdf
(Thanks, Joe!)

Whoops! I found my first typo :(

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Sofobomo finished!

2009-06-22T22:03:22Z

I've uploaded my SoFoBoMo book!! You can see my SoFoBoMo page here:
http://www.sofobomo.org/2009/books/DeniseCicuto/My-chosen-family/

There's a reduced size version PDF of the blurb proof there.
~~(The PDF was too large to upload so I only uploaded one image from it to the SoFoBoMo page. If you'd like to see the whole PDF, let me know and I can email it to you.)~~

You can also see the first 15 pages of the final version at the blurb bookstore here:
http://www.blurb.com/books/737896
(If you want to buy a copy, click on the the "About Book" link on the upper right of that page. I'm not marking the price up. What you see is what blurb charges.)

In the end, it has 51 photos (only one of which I didn't take).
30 people (and pets) posed for me.
I'm happy it's done. It was a great learning experience.
It might not be perfect, but it's done!!

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Sofobomo [Day 26] Sneak peek

2009-06-17T16:16:17Z

I've posted some photos from my Sofobomo project on my flickr page for you to see here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nisaa/sets/72157619773406561/

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Sofobomo [Day 25]

2009-06-17T01:23:38Z

Today was supposed to be a day of several photo shoots, many of which were thwarted by a migraine that came back this afternoon :( I did, however, manage to take a picture of ME that I don't hate and have already inserted into the book and got in a few photos of my friend Catherine.

I've rescheduled one shoot until Thursday but with my work schedule and trip this Friday, there won't be enough time to get everyone. I will accept this. It's ok. I won't take anymore photos of anyone else over webcam because this IS a book about photographs as much as it's about the people in them.

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Sofobomo [Day 23]

2009-06-14T20:40:55Z

I have just over a week to finish my book. I stayed up very late last night working on it and have been doing a bunch of rearranging of the layout today. I took photos of people last Thursday at my art opening and had a photo shoot with one person that morning. I have been bugging my husband to pose for photos with me but that seems to be the wrong tactic since he hates having his photo taken. It's hard to take candid shots of yourself without a tripod though . . .

It's not exactly down to the wire but this coming week I have one photo shoot scheduled on Tuesday, maybe I'll squeeze in one or two more and then all that's left is to take photos of me and Joe together in the redwoods. Piece of cake, right?

yikes!

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Sofobomo [Day 16]

2009-06-08T06:26:32Z

Well this has been a very productive weekend. I had four different photo shoots with friends between Friday and today! I am now at the required 35 photos for the Sofobomo project but I'm not stopping there! I still have at least 4 or 5 more people to try to schedule time with so I can take photos of them. One of them leaves the country on Friday so I'm not sure I'll get to her in time :( I will take my camera with me this week to a few celebrations including anniversary dinners and my photo reception. I'm sure there'll be a few photo ops over the course of the week.

There aren't yet any photos of ME in the book. I'll have to remedy that soon, even if it means setting up my tripod and the timer and just posing in front of it (not my favorite thing ever.)

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Sofobomo [Day 12] Pause/Resume

2009-06-04T06:43:01Z

I've decided to take the advice of my friends and cut myself some slack. After all, this project is really for me. I've decided that this project was on pause for the past week. Real life got in the way of a lot of things.

Tonight I worked on the cover of the book (How exciting!) and the dedication page. I have to figure out what to do about the lines in the photos I took over the webcam (criss cross lines appear on some of the photos, making the subject appear as if he was in jail or something).

Anyway, I have three sets of subjects lined up to photograph this coming weekend. Onward.

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Sofobomo Day ?

2009-06-04T01:27:59Z

I'm wondering if I should give myself 6 more days to finish this given the extenuating circumstances. I mean, I may be able to use a few of the photos I took while I was at home but that's it. I edited my book a little on the plane last Thursday bit after that, I was caught up in family stuff. There's nothing in the rules that says I can or can't pause my Sofobomo month due to a death in the family.

Thoughts?

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Sofobomo [Day 11]

2009-05-27T06:30:02Z

Today I took photos of rightkindofme and her daughter and had a lot of fun. I think I'm more excited than hesitant about the project after today.

I'm taking a lot of photos of my friends and family. They're not all great photos from a technical viewpoint but they're fun photos and they convey a lot of happiness. And right now, that's ok by me.
If I think of this as more of a photo album of my loved ones and their loved ones, I can forgive myself for the flaws.

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Sofobomo [Day 10]

2009-05-26T06:14:07Z

Is it really Day 10?

I took some photos of friends today who will appear in the book. I also spend a bunch of time last night and tonight playing with layout in blurb. It's really quite easy to use. I've put 10 photos in so far with text and found out that there are lots of options for text and photo layouts, which is great.

I have more than 10 photos to go into the book - I just haven't gotten them off of the camera yet. I have numerous photo ops left and photo-worthy celebrations. It occurs to me that I don't have any photos of ME in the book yet. I know that's going to be rough because I hate photos of me and now I'm the one who has to take them. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it . . .

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Sofobomo [Days 8 & 9]

2009-05-25T06:58:19Z

Last night I told more friends at a party about my project and they said they'd love to be in it (3 more people).

I also took some better pictures of my dog.

Today: Nada, zip, zero, zilch. I have three minutes left to today. I'll try to at least download the Blurb software so I can start the layout.

Tomorrow: I'll bring my camera to a Memorial Day get together and maybe take some photos of people.

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Sofobomo [Day 7]

2009-05-23T06:50:55Z

This morning I took pictures of my dog while my hubby and I took her for a walk like I said I would.
And later I learned about the different options in Lightroom to help me print photos (thank you, joedecker).

And I learned that high quality jpegs can take a loooooooooooooonnnng time to upload. I actually don't know if this will help me when I end up laying out the book but it just might. Especially if I have to do at least 35 photos. It could take a while. I'd better start early. (Logging into blurb account now.) Mercury Retrograde sucks. All is fine now.

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Sofobomo [Day 6]

2009-05-22T05:23:54Z

I took some pictures of my adorable cats tonight, including Spartacus in mid-yawn. I attempted to take pictures of my dog Sofi but she's black and it's night and it's just not happening. Maybe tomorrow I'll get some photos of her when we take her out for a morning walk.

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Sofobomo [Day 5]

2009-05-21T06:17:22Z

I did absolutely nothing today for this project. But I was really productive and stayed up late last night writing some of the text to go along with the photos. Ok, wait, then I did about a 15 minutes worth of stuff today since I went to sleep at 12:15ish last night.

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Sofobomo [Day 4]

2009-05-20T04:41:37Z

Today was pretty productive in terms of taking photos. I met up with deyo and mactavish to take photos of them and their dogs. When I got home, I took photos of stevefava and harpydisplayed and a few of our pets.

One thing I found difficult today was taking photos of two people at a time, especially if one or both of them are laughing. Ultimately, I'll be happy with slightly blurry photos if the people in them look genuinely happy.

Photographing dogs if they're not napping is an entirely different story. Well, maybe it isn't. It's difficult enough to take photos of dogs because they don't often sit still. On top of that, deyo and mactavish have dogs that are mostly black. My dog is black too. It's a lot more challenging to get a photo of them that's not blurry, if they're awake.

I will have to flaunt the imperfection then, embrace negative clarity and have a few blurry photos. I'm ok with that.

After today's photos, I'm less worried about coming up with 35 photos for the project. I think I've got at least five so far. And, I might have more subjects to shoot soon too!

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Sofobomo [Day 3]

2009-05-19T06:52:22Z

Today I asked another friend to pose for me and I told her what my Sofobomo project was about. She agreed to be in it. Yay! And I wrote a little bit about my happy poly weekend trip.
Tomorrow I have two people lined up to take photos of (and maybe their dogs too).

I swear these posts will get more interesting as the month goes on. I have one photo so far that I can use. The book has to have at least 35 in it. I'd better get cracking.

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Sofobomo [Day 2]

2009-05-18T06:22:21Z

This isn't strictly a Sofobomo post but the events of this morning affected some photos I took for sure. I'll start by saying I went to sleep at 11pm last night and set my iPhone alarm to go off at 4:45am for our sunrise shoot. It wasn't going to be a lot of sleep but I had the promise of a nap after going to photograph sunrise.

I woke up when the iPhone crickets chirped me awake. I got dressed, I cut and buttered and ate half a bagel. I was about to go and meet up with my friends when I looked at the clock in the hotel room and it said it was 3am. I opened my laptop to double check. It said 3am. My iPhone said 5am. I very nearly texted joedecker to triple check but then realized I should let him sleep.

I went back to sleep for another hour and a half and got up again for the real sunrise. I was quite grumpy by then.

Ever see the movie "Amelie"? Remember the scene where she tricks the grocer by playing practical jokes and sets his alarm ahead so he wakes up too early, swaps his toothpaste for foot cream, cuts his shoelaces too short and puts his doorknobs on backwards? I kinda felt like that only I was glad my toothpaste was real toothpaste and it was only the iPhone playing tricks on me with the time. (BTW, I looked and could not find the scene from Amelie on Youtube).

As a result, my portraits this morning at sunrise were not so great (read: really blurry and not useable). So rather than giving up entirely, my Sofobomo contribution today was to start writing the introduction for the book.

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Sofobomo for real [Day 1]

2009-05-17T04:10:19Z

I was going to start yesterday but I didn't get any intentional photos of my subjects (but a few where one of them was in a shot by accident). So instead, I started today. I was aiming for a few silhouetted photos of at least one person and achieved that goal while we were all waiting around for sunset. A few others were ruined by lens flare (grrr).

Maybe tomorrow I might do a self-portrait. We'll see. Otherwise, there were lots of pretty things to see and photograph in the Mono Basin for sure.

Since my bio-family news is kind of coloring my thoughts these days, it's important for me to note that even though I like taking gothy photos, I'm really not in the mood to go to the cemetery on this trip. If I'm lucky, I'll get to show my grandfather some of the photos I take on this trip. If not, maybe I'll dedicate my photo book to him.

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My SoFoBoMo starts tomorrow

2009-05-15T16:12:24Z

Tomorrow is the day I start my Solo Photo Book Month. No matter what happens, I'm committed to at least trying to see it through. The theme ("My chosen poly family") may change depending on the course of events in my biological family over the next few weeks, but I'm still gonna give it a try.

When I wasn't able to sleep this morning, I started thinking of the text for the book. I can pretty much write that anytime when I'm not taking photos.

Today the photos will start at Mono Lake.

I cut my left thumb this morning but I suppose it's better than cutting my right index finger which I use to I press the shutter on the camera.

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