You're invited to a party! Word has it that my publisher is expecting my first book to be delivered to them within the next week or so. It has cleared the Panama Canal on it's way from the Asian press they've used to print this modest endeavor.

For you locals and those near-by, please pencil October 17 in your calendar and plan to stop by for the book debut, soirée and photos on the walls event at the State of the Art Gallery in the Oak Lawn/Uptown area of Dallas. The image above is the cover for the book and the front of the invitation card I've had printed up. The back side of the invitation card is here:

A larger version of the back can be seen here.

Come for the Costco hors d'oeuvres and stay for the cheap wine. It's come and go as you are—stop by before dinner or after or maybe to get out of the chill October night. Sorry Harry, no overnight guests. 

It's a one night only event. The images on the gallery walls will not stay. They'll go up Friday and get taken down on Sunday. The ten images of mine that are in a local office and boardroom will be on loan and on display. There will be a few images from the book, and a collection of smaller framed images. All of the photography will be for sale at much less than typical gallery prices. The ones from the office will also be for sale, but a customer will have to wait for the image to be duplicated, matted and framed for a later delivery.

Those astute observers among you will recognize an homage to Open Salon in the invitation as the background image on the back is my tribute to OS in a graffiti metaphor from this post—note the OS logo.

I said "modest" in the first paragraph and I guess I should explain. I know this drives my friends nuts and I shouldn't really say stuff like this—but it's in my nature to offer some disclaimers. I'm typically self-deprecating about a lot of stuff, and more so when my own subjective artistry is up for discussion. Yes, it goes counter to the idea of marketing and promotion—I hope you'll understand.

Consider this: there are about 7 billion people in the world today. About half of that number have cameras.* Maybe a billion or so are pretty good with their camera. Perhaps several hundred million are good enough to be called artists. And a smaller number—but still an enormous number—are outstanding artists. I'm realistic about my abilities. I think I'm above average, but I don't consider myself an avant garde photography artist. And really, that's entirely ok. My photography has been purchased and is on display in some pretty cool places. I'm very grateful for that, but my friends know that I'm not full of myownself when it comes to what I do. One of my favorite things to do is to encourage others in the art—I hope some of you have seen evidence of that. (*I don't really know what the correct numbers are, I'm just guessing, but I think you get what I'm trying to say.)

One other thing and I'll be done with the caveat emptors. In spite of what I just said, I do consider myself an artist. And down through time artists in all media have often struggled with the importance of their own work. I think it has to do with their own progression as an artist. I don't think I'll ever stop being a part of any number of learning curves. How I do things now in photography is not how I did things before, as it is in most endeavors in creativity. You learn, change, modify, synthesize and generally just improve. There are images in the book that I would now do differently, but it has been a long time coming and there wasn't the means to make changes that I would now like to see.

On the other hand, modest doesn't represent the amount of work I put into the book. I did the design and layout myself because I didn't want to hand the design over to someone else. My workflow started with importing the images from my camera into Apple's Aperture, a photo storage and management application, exporting to CS3 and later to CS4 Adobe Photoshop in TIFF format to convert to CYMK and to use the PS algorithms for changing the dimensions of the images to pre-fit the dimensioned placement containers in Adobe InDesign. I then exported to the chapter folders on the hard drive, and finally imported the finished image into the InDesign layout. Most pages are full bleed rich black to make the images pop just that little bit more. I'm happy with the design and layout. The work was precise and meticulous and often had single pixel-wide adjustments. It was a lot of work.

The image at the top of this post is the cover for my book—it's been a long time coming. It's not just because it's been on a slow boat from China—we negotiated out of a self publishing contract because the galley proofs didn't match the color pre-press runs provided by a local printing company. Though we never saw the 5,000 copies they printed, it proved to be a blessing in disguise as the book was later picked up by Pelican Publishing, a small firm out of Louisiana. Alles mit Gott…

Many of my friends know what a long process it has been. 

My workspace above shows some digital proofing I was doing on the book just before sending it off the the publisher. The book was too large to send on a single CD. It had to be burned to a double layer DVD to hold the output from InDesign and a regular CD to hold the print ready high-res PDF.

(The photo shows things I no longer have, or have been updated: I now have two new 23" displays, a new MacPro dual quad core instead of the G5 shown, an iPhone instead of the SonyEricsson P900 and a newer iPod. I still have Ed and Ein from Cowboy Bebop, the scanner, the printers and the tangled mess of wires.)

The book only 64 pages. It's a very thin coffee table book. It can't compare to the other books we've seen connected in one way or another to Open Salon. Dave Cullen spent 10 years of his life researching his NYT best selling Columbine. Bob Eckstein also put in years of work and research for his amazing The History of the Snowman. Gwen Cooper also has an enormously successful NYT best seller, Homer's Odyssey. Scott Rosenberg, one of the founders of Salon and Open Salon, has an enormously important book in his Say Everthing. And the lovely Lea Lane's book Solo Traveler is frankly much more interesting than my own. (Yes, I own all the above books.)

Dallas Iconography is my baby and I'm proud of it, but it doesn't compare in scope or importance to these other beautiful works.

I should also mention that there are many friends who've helped me and encouraged me along the way. Interestingly, there are several that I thank in the dedication in the front of the book that have gone on to become members here on Open Salon: Deven, Bill S., wskrz, labrat, growell. There are many more on OS who have since become friends and who have helped and encouraged as well. Bob Eckstein in particular has offered many encouraging words and "insider" tips. A special thanks to all of you, I wish I could redo and expand the dedication in the book—saying this now is just not enough.  

I'm delighted that there have been about 400 pre-release sales. It will not be a best seller, but that's not why I put the book together. It is a testament to my love of the craft in the place where I live. The publisher has expressed an interest in seeing some samples and a proposal for the next book, one that would not be limited to a particular city, but cover the images collected from across the state. I consider that an enormous compliment.

All that said, I think the book is a fair representation of some iconic images that show what Dallas is—with some allusions to where it has been. In that vein, one of the photos is of the Texas School Book Depository, with the infamous window used by Lee Harvey Oswald on the sixth floor framed by a loop in the tree. 

Some notes and links:

I'm in the process of sending out hard copies of the invitation to the soirée event to local art people and patrons. If you want one of these cards—if I have any left over—I'll be happy to send you one. Just send me an OSmail with your address and I'll get it in the mail.

I made the announcement of the event on my Facebook page, and already have some responses from friends on OS and off that they'll be attending. That calendar page can be found here.

You can see the book on Amazon here—it's almost ready to be shipped for those of you that have pre-ordered.

You can see the book on the publisher's page here. Special bonus: on the publisher's page you get to see our own Lea Lane's promotion commentary. I sent her a PDF galley of the book with strict instructions to be completely honest in what she saw and if she chose to write a blurb for the book, to be honest in that as well. Her words are a treasured gift. (I haven't actually seen the finished version of the book yet, but I think Lea's comments are also on the flap copy.)

I don't get very many complimentary copies of my own book—about a dozen or so. If someone wants a signed copy of the book, and they can't come to one of the scheduled book signings the publisher has set up, then I have to buy the book from Pelican and then resell it. It's the way it works.

Light a candle for my modest success. And thanks. I can't express what your friendship, encouragement, support and kind words have meant to me in the year-and-a-half I've been here on Open Salon. 

Edit: I meant to include the following image in the original post, and simply forgot. Back when we were trying to get the book self-published, I used Adobe Illustrator to design and draw a colophon, an image to use for the name of the publishing company we were using as a DBA. The company name is Pangur Bán Publishing. Pangur Bán is Irish for "white cat" and was the subject of a delightful medieval poem of the same name.

all images copyright © 2007, 2008 and 2009 by barry b. doyle • all rights reserved 

###