Hard Memories

I finished a photo album – finally. It took months to select my favorite photos, process them with photoshop, and arrange them in a pleasing format. My ambition also included writing introductory overviews. In all, it was a heap of work and while I started well, I didn’t seem to have the necessary gumption to get the job done. At somewhere near the 90% completion level the progress stopped. And didn’t move. I lamented this until one day it just sort of came together.

Actually, I had to take drastic measures. I purposely put myself in a position where I could do nothing but complete the remaining tasks. A pen, a notebook, an iPod, and an uncomfortable seat in an overly air-conditioned starbucks put me over the edge. The project was finished at long last. Off to the printer.

I have used internet photo publishing software in the past, like Kodak and MyPublisher. This time, I took a gamble on a new company called Blurb and their Booksmart software. Kodak and MyPublisher have very low limits on the maximum number of pages available in a single book; Blurb on the other hand was the only publisher who would produce anywhere near the number of pages I would need to catalog all that time in Russia.

After I finished, I checked the pricing. A nearly 200 page book of photos would cost some $50. Reasonable, but that’s only marginally more expensive than a 30 page book published with Kodak only a few weeks before. Thoughts of comic-book quality paper went through my head while I waited for the delivery to arrive.

It came after a week, and I was shocked. The quality is exceptional in absolutely every respect. This doesn’t look like a photo album assembled on the internet. The binding, the custom dustcover, the print quality, make it look like a coffee table book from a bookstore. The real benefit is that the professional nature of the book makes my photos appear much more impressive than they really are. I can’t express how happy I am that an important part of my life is so well presented. Check out Blurb and use it.

I was so inspired that I completed another volume over the following few days. Where the first volume chronicled my coast-to-coast trip, the second volume offers general images from living and traveling in Russia over the course of 10 months or so. Another nearly 200 pages of images in a book designed to match the first tome.

It finally came today. Now, the speed with which I completed the second book really points out how much I dithered during construction of the first one.

In any case, there's a sense of accomplishment that goes with this. And in a weird way, a sense of closure. In some ways this is the real end of the journey. Luggage has been put away; life has moved on; and finally the photos have been bound into books. Books that will serve as touchstones of wonderful memories that have already begun to slip slowly into the past.