ChanRaymond dot net

I have to confess that I have not held my D60 for a while now although I have faithfully brought my gear to uni every Monday to Wednesday. There are just so many things going on in uni and personal life that I have decided to put photography to a standstill. I’m afraid I need to re-organise my time completely. Perhaps with a start to an earlier sleep?

On a totally unrelated note, I have finally received my photo book which compiles 20 of my 2008 and early 2009 photos from BigW. Yes, BigW has a photo lab which prints your photos on books, canvasses, etc. It was a promotional offer of an 8×8 photo book of 20 pages (excluding cover, so 20 photos [1 photo/page]) for half price (~$10), so I decided to have a go at it. The offer has been replaced by a canvas offer which starts at around $40 which I still am quite skeptical about (the quality, I mean).

Here’s a quick look of my photo book:

The front and back cover could probably have been much better with pictures, but I was rushing to finish the photo book because I only started doing it on the last day of the offer. The annoying BigW online photo application could have been much more user friendly, but it wasn’t as fun as I had imagined it to be. They also need more font options.

Yes, you are seeing (oily) finger prints. For reasons unknown, the paper is glossy-ish, plus my choice of black background probably was a bad idea to begin with. Probably should have started with white. Purity. Innocence.

First page is a pretty heavilly-edited shot of a couple of Japanese Koi fishes which belonged (notice the tense) to L’s mother. They died a few weeks after I took the shots. No, it wasn’t me.

The print quality isn’t bad at all unless you decide to grab a magnifying glass or something. If looked closely, I can see that my some photos have quite rough pixels which is not that apparent at all on my screen. But if you’re just doing this for a once-in-a-while thing, I think it’s quite worth the money. Just maintain a 15cm distance when you view the book.

The line in the middle shows some signs of strain now because it just wouldn’t stay open long enough for me to take the shot, so I had to use a wee bit of force. I should have used the polariser as well to get rid of the reflection of the Speedlight, but I just couldn’t be stuffed doing so much at this time. Yeap, the pictures are (half) fresh from the camera, after editing for the blacks anyway.

So here ya go, my mobile number (and more fingerprints). That’s the back cover by the way, and yes, I should have done more than just my contact details.

ps. Please don’t spam my phone, but instead, I’ll be eternally grateful if you would invite me to your wedding/birthday/party/etc for free photography.

p.s.s Shan has written something that I have been thinking about lately and he has really hit the nail on the head in his post the Importance of Failure. Thank you for sharing, Shan.