Photobook 1: The Story

First of a series of articles introducing my new self-published photobook which will be on sale starting in mid May, 2008.

For many years, I have taken photos here and there. By the time I was ten or eleven I had gotten myself a 35 mm camera, and took pictures at family reunions and more... By the time I was a Junior in high school, I volunteered as a yearbook staff photographer, and had a great time.

Then, for a long time, I would take some photos here and there, but the cost of film processing always slowed me down. That's not to say I didn't take a dozen or more rolls of film per year, but .. 24 photos a month more or less aren't all that much.

In 2004 or thereabouts, a neighbor gave me a Fuji 2MP camera in return for some yard work I had done for her. That little camera and I took a lot of neat photos - but I learned rather quickly what the limitations of a 2MP camera were in terms of quality. Don't get me wrong - it took great photos but... at 2MP there wasn't a whole lot you could do with them.

In early 2005, I bought a 4.1MP Olympus - and to this day even with a broken lcd screen, I still take great photos with it. Last year, I upgraded to an 8.1 MP Sony (I prefer the Olympus). In March 2006, I took a photograph that would alter my fate, to some degree, at least.

It was a photograph of a church, taken at sunset, with rays of light shining down out of the clouds.

It was, in short, an inspiration. The only name I could think of for it was "Heaven's Light" because it seemed as if God were shining his heavenly light down upon this old rural church. In the next article, I will give a description of the church, and history of it, but for this, I will tell more about where this photograph led me.

I had a desire to share this image with others, not quite knowing where or what. Someone mentioned The Photo Forum and I checked it out. It's a good community of sorts, but to be able to really interact very much with other photographers, you had to pay for the membership.

But through viewing profiles and reading people's comments in the forum, I saw multiple links to deviantArt so I thought I'd check it out, too. It was here that I opened an account and started exploring the art that is photography. Through interacting with other artists, viewing what they did with their cameras, and asking questions about techniques, I learned a lot about photography, my camera, and myself.

I am still an "amateur". To date, my total earnings from "photography" remains under $50 or so (with expenses far greater). I have sold a few prints here and there, but at a dollar or two or less per copy, the profit was minimal. Still, I've enjoyed learning more about my community as much as learning more about the camera, and somewhere along the way, I started building a collection of images depicting life in Central Pennsylvania.

On deviantArt, as well as Gather, I have met some pretty amazing people along the way. One of these folks is Karen Oudeman, an artist who lives in the Netherlands. She asked me if she could paint one of my photos.. And of course I said Yes. :) The painting has, over time, turned into five paintings... each of them special and unique in it's own way.

Recently I ordered a 100 page book of my photos, and then - having started there, for myself, I started looking at where I could create a book to sell to other people... and eventually settled on Blurb. I have spent the past few months working on formatting and organizing a collection of more than 150 of my photographs (and Karen's five paintings), all depicting scenes in Central Pennsylvania, primarily Dauphin County with a few images from neighboring counties.

In all, the book I have put together is 160 pages, and in this post, I will show you the cover, featuring the photograph that started it all, "Heaven's Light", and the oil painting based upon it, along with the bios of myself and Karen. The book is offered in a hardcover "coffee table" style format, complete with a paper sleeve cover featuring the images shown below.

The front cover, features the "Heaven's Light" photograph.



The back cover features an oil painting based on the Heaven's Light photograph.



The artists bios are inside the dust jacket sleeves...



And to give you a preview of each of the rest of the articles I will publish in this series, here is the "table of contents" page for the book, showing each of the major categories: The Church, Farmscapes, Country Living, Waterscapes, Wildlife, Plantlife, and Harrisburg.



All images copyright 2005-2008 James A. Wheeler or Karen Oudeman.

Contact me at arkansawyer@gmail.com for information on obtaining copies of any of these prints or information on the upcoming 160 page photobook, which will be a "coffee table" style hardcover book complete with paper sleeve cover, initially priced around $60 - which to my cheapskate pocketbooks seems high until I compare the cost to that of eating out at a nice restaurant, which for a family can quickly exceed the cost of this book, and is quickly forgotten.


The series so far:
Photobook 1: The Story
Photobook 2: The Church
Photobook 3: Farmscapes
Photobook 4: Country Living
Photobook 5: Waterscapes
Photobook 6: Wildlife