Preserving Personal Photos: Comparing 3 Methods
August 20, 2003
This project (a hand bound, letterpressed wedding album) is the result of a comparison study of three methods of preserving personal photos. The first method was a $6.99 plastic covered photo album from Ross Dress For Less. The second was a web-ordered book created using iPhoto and Mac OSX. The third was to this hand crafted, archival book, sewn, bound with window cut pages...
1. The Ross Dress-for-Less Book
Ross Dress-for-Less is a graduate student's Godsend. Where else can the savvy shopper purchase a small retractable umbrella, t-shirts for $3.99 or even designer clothing for under $15? Maybe many department stores have the same bargains, but one would need to cover some serious square-footage in order to find deals. 'Ever tried to find a bargain at Nordstrom? My guess is that shopping for a similar item at Ross would take approximately 30% of the time it would take at Nordstrom, and perhaps 30% of the price too. Needless to say, a shopping experience at Ross can be fruitful, albeit fruitful with respect to "impulse buying". Shoppers never really know what they are going to get...
One of the novel aspects of shopping at Ross is the fact that it is more like visiting a flea market than going into a climate-controlled store with fluorescent lighting. On one aisle, you might pass a trashcan, saucepans, candles and photo albums. These are the items that have been sent to live out the remainder of their product lives in uncertainty. What is to become of the products that don't get sold on clearance? What if they don't get adopted? Thankfully, many products do find owners (or suckers), and this begins the story of the wedding photo album.
Its thick plastic, protective, cover was reminiscent of mothballs and clear vinyl seat covers. The kind of thing that "protected" the precious item from getting worn or dirty. In reality, it protected it from being seen for what it really is: A rather sweet, white-satin covered wedding album, with tiny pearls along the edge of a cut-out wedding dress, covered with white laced fabric, complete with a bodice and small satin bow. It is sinfully cheesy. A cheap but delightful bit of consumerism. Its pages yearned for substance, but held nothing more than plastic on paper. It would be perfect for holding wedding proofs from the negatives the photographer had sent, and it wouldn't get dirty. The backside of the album contained a clearly marked price tag reading $6.99. "What a bargain" I thought. It wasn't until I brought it home that I noticed the small punch-out note tabs that can be slid inside the pages for descriptions. While it seemed like a nice touch, I couldn't be bothered to actually fill them out, since it wasn't the final selection of photos after all.
The pages now contain 80 photos total, and the rest of the album is blank. Our wedding was small so it makes sense that we wouldn't fill out the whole album. Seems a bit of a waste of space now that I think about it. The book weighs 3 lbs and 7 oz. and is about 9" wide by 11" tall. It is 2 inches thick when half full of photos. The plastic is perfectly clear and transparent and I begin to wonder if it too, will discolor and become a steamy pale-yellow in a few decades. Perhaps it will even crack around the edges. The pages are perforated and tabbed at the center of the book. The perforated pages are subtle, and I'm not sure why they are there. Flipping through the pages, is an uneventful experience to the viewer who has already seen the images. Once the album is open the cover is invisible and unnoticed. The story isn't evident from the photos. One can see there was a wedding, and see who was there, but the viewer is forced to create the sequence of events and put the facts together without the benefit of the storyteller. It serves its purpose of saying, "I am a container for photos of a wedding...and I was $6.99."
2. The Mac iPhoto 2 Book
The room was cold. Damn cold. Even though it was 90 degrees outside in the summer heat outside the computer lab. The room was sterile and quiet except for the occasional graduate student walking in or out. The sound of the door swinging shut was one of the only signs of life with the exception of the lab manager's phone ringing and the occasional phone conversations happening around me. The computer cart is like a robot that sits still when someone is working on it, and comes to life when wheeled around. Its presence can be felt as its quiet monitor-face stares down upon surrounding students, occasionally gesturing by tilting one way or another. Why am I here?
I am here because of an apple. It was harmless, but it mandated my experience of ordering a hardbound book of wedding photos. The apple contains the magic seed from which I will create my hardbound book. The seed is OS X, and the ability to use iPhoto to custom order a book with photos and descriptions of my choosing. Here the adventure begins. I thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if I could do this from the comfort of my own home?" Not so. My home contains PCs, not Macs. Three PCs, in fact.
So, I began by moving over some high-resolution images from the network that I had scanned from negatives and photos. The 600 dpi resolution would surely produce book worthy images. "How would they be printed?", I wondered. "Would they be digital?". "Who would be binding the book when it was printed?". I imagined a little studio of bookbinders working in white Apple Research coats with the logo on the pocket, - a bone folder, and a pencil peeking over the top.
Opening iPhoto on the Mac was easy, and working my way around the "Make a Book" options was easy too. Even fun. I was frustrated that the first image in the template automatically became my cover image, and I didn't really seem to have much choice in switching that out. It didn't matter that my images were a different size because it seemed to work anyway. I had fun writing small descriptions for each photo and seeing how things would look in each of the four template options. I chose the "portfolio" option for its clean elegant design. I experimented with changing fonts, although the font sizing options seemed to be somewhat set or, at least, harder to change. I kept wondering how it would turn out, and couldn't wait to finish and order. I've never been so excited to enter my credit card online. Before I did, I printed a large proof on the black and white laser printer. It was huge. I couldn't imagine the book that large, but the dimensions it gave for the final size were ideal, so I didn't question it.
For someone who is used to managing all options closely, and not being able to see the "man behind the curtain" it was a bit frustrating. I didn't have the confidence that it would turn out the way I wanted, but I knew it was an experiment, and I was ready to take that risk. But..."How could one file sent via the web to Apple produce a book that is a quality wedding album? How does it know what font I was using and why didn't it ask me for the fonts when I sent the file? What about the images themselves?" I figured out that the file was imbedding all of this information, but seeing it in action was pretty impressive. It meant that I could actually enjoy the experience of "making a book" without worrying about the technology. Apple did a good job. I didn't even have the book yet, and I was impressed.
When the book arrived in a regular sized USPO box with the Apple return address I was excited. I opened the outer box and inside was a nicely designed gray and white custom fit box with the Apple logo and "Made on a Mac" on the outside. The tabbed flaps opened nicely without ripping, and inside was the black, hard bound book cover with a photo of my husband and I peering out at me underneath a layer of thin protective plastic. I opened the plastic and took out the book. Impressive for $41 (including shipping and handling.) The black linen cloth was smooth and pristine. No glue showing at all. I opened the book and leafed through the familiar photos with descriptions. The pages were glossy and thin, with a highly reflective quality in daylight. Not super sturdy, but they would do. The fonts looked fine, even the cheesy script font I put on the cover to try and "stump the system" printed ok. The last page of the end papers contained the Apple logo again. Nice product placement. The experience of going through the book was sweet and sour. If I had known how nice it would have turned out, I would have paid more attention to spelling. It would make a very nice gift for someone, and it has made me think that it would be fun to transfer some other images to the Robot Mac on the cart in the lab and order up another one of my family reunion. It might even be worth braving the cold.
3. The Custom Book (see photos top)
If the task had been written out beforehand, it might have looked something like this: Design book, pick photos, write copy, edit and re-edit copy, select paper, learn how to create a font, install it, create film negatives, create polymer plates from 14 paragraphs of text, mix ink, remix ink, crank up the press and print from plates, wait, reprint one plate 3 times, create line art from 2 photos and plates from line art, wait, cut windows in all pages, order prints, wait, tip-in photos, tip in glassine, wait, sew printed cut pages into book, add blank pages, cover and bind it, wait.
The fact that the task wasn't written out beforehand is the reason it is complete. Ignorance is bliss, although I wouldn't have changed a thing about the learning and making process in the end. The mistakes, while subtle to some, were a thorn in my side for a while. A shameful little bruise bearing the hurt (both physical and mental) of the process. In the end, the album became a part of me, and accepting its imperfections and do-overs made it more real than it could have been otherwise. After all, it was something of an experiment. One that turned more into a testament of our time as designers than of simply making the album archival in quality, to stand the test of time.
Getting Dirty. Whether it was glue on my fingers, or thin layers of paper sticking to various patches of skin below my elbows, it seemed it was never left behind. I would dream of threading the needle, hearing the squeaky sound of the waxed thread as it slipped between my forefinger and thumb in my sleep. How do you spell Glassine anyway? Why was it so important now that I know the trouble it takes to get 14 pages of it cut perfectly straight, unwrinkled and glued into the book just right?
Smelly. Ink smells. It doesn't smell bad, in fact I kind of like the smell. It only hurts after about 6 hours in the letterpress room without going outside for a breather. It smells like work. Not quite like B.O., more like the B.O. of a press. Someday someone might sell little bottles of what press ink smells like. Like chips of paint from the Golden Gate Bridge or some other tourist trinket. For those who might not ever get close enough ever again. Like aromatherapy for the computer artist who doesn't leave the computer. Bottled ink might make the room smell like work.
I wanted something different for my wedding book. I wanted something that seemed as timeless and real as my parents black and white photos in their Spanish leather-bound album with yes - glassine leafed pages between them. Funny… I spent more time creating the album than on the wedding altogether. It never seemed important to have a traditional wedding, but I spent an entire summer building what might be the most traditional album of all time in some weird way. Yes, it is simply a reproduction of something timeless, because I can't exactly put my finger on what it is that is timeless in the first place. It contradicts itself all over the place. Its letter pressed pages, using a computer generated film negative to imprint a hand written font. How crazy it sounds. The black and white photos, printed digitally with no scratches or impurities that Photoshop left behind - tipped into the album with archival linen hanging tape.
The sewn pages are pure and promising, with the sewn spine as taught as the first year of marriage...the tension of sharing a household easing up with every passing page. Ok - enough of the similes....
I guess this was about blood sweat and tears to a degree. The blood because, for once, it was actually circulating in my legs and body while I worked, unlike the times spent at the computer in a ergonomically challenged chair. The sweat, because you can get sweaty...although I seldom did in the freezing cold classrooms of the second floor. In fact I wore a sweatshirt many times. The tears will come from thinking about sharing it in 50 years with my grandkids. In all likelyhood I will cry - but the tears spent this time around were more from disappointment that those closest to me, know little of the intricacies of the strange, old fashioned making process that made it so...and in the end, to them it might be simply paper and ink. Perhaps that is the wrong way to look at it?