CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

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CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby CNP Staff » Fri May 27, 2016 9:04 am

Dear Friends,

During the last CNP meet everyone felt we need to bring out a CNP coffee table book! This will be non-commercial effort and the book will be available for buying at cost price. Several CNPians have volunteered to complete this huge task which probably will take more than 6 months of effort (since this not our full time job). There were multiple discussions/views/suggestions among group of folks during the meet. We plan to take this effort with all your support.

We would like to share the proposed plan as it stands today! Please stay tuned and share your views/suggestions. When we complete this task we will have the book to see, enjoy and feel proud off! We need all your support to complete this huge effort. We will keep you updated with the progress we make in this thread.

- CNP Staff

------------------------

The current sketch of the plan


What it takes to bring out a book?
- Selection of images
- Written/mail consent from copyright owners (CNPians)
- Preparing written content for the book (what and how - design)
- Review of the written content
- Preparing high resolution images/processing images for an uncompromising quality print
- Book design - cover designs, internal layout designs, fitting images, written content to chosen layout
- Soft Proofing, book as PDF (a side product)
- Choosing appropriate print media
- Reviewing first copy
- Review feedback incorporation
- Working with a publisher (probably we will take self publishing route)
- final printed copies in hand!

Structure of the teams & responsibilities (arrived based on interest/volunteering)

- Book Design Team (Saurabh Desai, Lila - both of them seem to have design team/design background, RD, Ganesh)
- Responsible for designing the book using Adobe InDesign (or whatever the chosen book design software)
This includes front/back cover design and internal layout of the book with images and written content (Saurabh and his team)
- Providing suggestions/review feedback on overall design (Lila/RD/Ganesh)

- Image Selection Team (VMR, Ramesh Adkoli, Shankar Kiragi, Praveen P Mohandas, Nevil, Nirlep, Adithya Biloor, Jayesh Joshi)
This team will select N images based on the selection criteria below (we need to decide on total number of images)
This will be a tough job, we have over 9000 images to go through!

- Image Post Processing Team (Raj/Ganesh/Saurabh(if he has time)/Ashwini Kumar Bhat/Shivakumar L/Ravi Prakash SS)
This team processes each image using fully calibrated print workflow. We should make every attempt to preserve the artistic intent of the creator of the image.
The owner of the image prepares the high resolution image matching her/his creative intent. Final tweaking for the print workflow will be done by this team.

- Written content team (VMR & Nirlep)
- Based on the selected images this team prepares written content

- Content review team (Lila, Sriharsha, Shivakumal L)
- This team is responsible for review of the written content - syntax and semantics.

- QA team (RD/Vikas/Ganesh)
- Responsible for ensuring final uncompromising quality of the book! The book will not be mass printed without the approval by this team

- Working with a chosen publisher (Saurabh + whomever he chooses to support him)

Book size & paper type
TBD

Image Selection Criteria

Timeless
Fair mix of natural history and art
Fair mix of color & B/W
Having enough resolution to be able to print at 300dpi for the chosen size
(this means we need 300 pixels to make 1 inch print. For example an image of dimension 900 pixels x 600 pixels can only yield 3 inches x 2 inches print)

Image Selection Process (to be followed by the image selection team)

- Each member of the image selection team selects N "timeless" images except her/him own
- The image belongs to a person who is currently a member of CNP and agrees for its non-commercial use in the book
- The team debates,collates and make a final selection of N images (We will print M images, M<N)
- Request for high resolution files will be sent along with written consent for the intended use
- Ensures the needed quality for printing in those high resolution files
- The team will hand over M high resolution images to the post processing team.

Proposed start date

1 June 2016

Proposed end date

1 Jan 2017

--------------------------------------

Summary of suggestions/thoughts/views so far.


For the text - as we had discussed in Dandeli, how about considering the valuable and thoughtful comments that are there in the gallery / discussion forum.

Many times it has so happened that the comments have gone beyond that particular image which has triggered the thread. The challenge is to find out such instances and dig those comments which talk about 'creativity', 'composition', 'breaking the rule', etc in general and that can be worth of preserving.

As we all agree that it is not just the images but the discussions like these that has happened around these images which has made this forum what it is today.
Showcasing just the images as part of the book would mean to leave one entire part of the community. Having these thoughtful comments / articles in between the images would give more holistic pleasure to the reader and reduce our effort in coming up with separate text to describe each of the finally selected images.


Most CT books are made with a theme. But I can visualise CNP CT book will be close to WPY yearly book.


Can we also include a page introducing the rationale behind starting CNP and the thoughts behind creating this platform from your POV? I guess it will act as a great starting point for people to start enjoying the images. Also are we considering grouping images into specific themes, like BW, Blurs and OOFs, Abstracts etc?


1. Do we have one write-up in the beginning followed by pictures without words or we want to have write-up with each picture
2. Coming to Shankar's poser; do we divide the book into various sub-themes with write-up for each. How do we include photographers' own vision behind his/her pictures
3. Will the pictures be color only
4. Foreword by the core editorial team touching upon the need to have a forum like CNP and the way ahead
5. Ashwin's point about including interesting comments would make the book more engrossing
and distressed borders for pictures?


Unlike an exhibition a book has certain unique features
- It is permanently available to one for repeated viewing: So we must make the viewer go back and find new meaning over a period of time
- It is a little more controlled experience in terms of sequencing and pairing of images. You can see a contrast from two facing images
- A visual experience which makes you come back to it see it again think about it and give you that "Aha" moment
Therefore
In that sense I was thinking an uninterrupted flow of images as a well as thought out sequence based on a philosophy rather than subject centric
We should sequence flow of images to a theme and we should pair images to add to the ability to uncover new meanings and open new conversations within and without
A philosophy foreword and in the end a description for each picture by page number ?


till which (uploaded) date we should consider images for selection? Till March 2015 or end of 2015 or ..?


How about choosing the cover image for the book? Has that been factored into the Image selection process? And defining the criteria for choosing the cover image
Regards,
CNP Staff
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby Madhav Jois » Fri May 27, 2016 10:22 am

WOW, glad to see this getting shape! Thank you. Would love to contribute, please let me know if there is any opportunity.
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby Ganesh H Shankar » Fri May 27, 2016 10:44 am

Thanks, Madhav for volunteering. I think we have huge work in front of us. We will contact you once we start the work.
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby Samyak » Sat May 28, 2016 10:51 am

Wow. Looks like a monumental work. Would love to chip in too :)
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby Ganesh H Shankar » Sat May 28, 2016 12:22 pm

Thanks, Samyak! We will get in touch..
Ganesh H. Shankar
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby Saurabh R. Desai » Sun May 29, 2016 2:06 am

Dear Friends,

I am sure with the collective efforts of all the team members, this can be a one of it's kind book in India ever.
I am very happy to be the part of the team & will try my level best to create a unique & yet powerful CNP CT book.

Thanks & Regards
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby Shivang Mehta » Wed Jun 01, 2016 10:39 am

Awesome. Glad to see this shaping up. Long due and I am sure it would be a block buster product.
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby Ganesh H Shankar » Thu Jun 02, 2016 6:31 am

Status update:

Extracted, indexed, downloaded about 9300 images from CNP data store to make it available for the selection team!

Selection team, you will have tough time :) Probably one book may not do justice, 2-3 volumes? may be..
Ganesh H. Shankar
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby Prashanth Sampagar » Sun Jun 19, 2016 8:18 pm

Great initiative!!! I believe this book will be very unique and will set a new standard.

Now I understand the scale of this effort by looking at the huge amount of work. Please let me know if you think I could be of any help.

Regards,
Prashanth
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby Jagadeesh Rampam » Mon Jun 20, 2016 12:02 pm

Woahh! Great Initiative, appreciate the teams for efforts.

Will be glad to be part and contribute in any manner! Looking forward for the CNP coffee table book. Cheers!
CEO & Founder, wilderhood.com
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby dinesh.ramarao » Thu Oct 13, 2016 2:19 pm

Status update:

Last week we finished image selection.
Thanks to Image Selection Team,
and Ramesh Adkoli for steering the process.

-RD
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby Ganesh H Shankar » Fri Oct 14, 2016 11:22 pm

Thank you all for your effort in making a fine selection! I think the selection team had a great challenge.
We do have lots of efforts left to give it a final shape. We will begin the next phase shortly.
Thanks again!
Ganesh H. Shankar
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby Ganesh H Shankar » Sun Mar 12, 2017 3:50 pm

Dear Friends,

First let me apologise for taking so long to set up the needed web infrastructure to accept those image/s (those posted till upto 31 Dec 2015) which were selected by our selection team and to have a feature to upload them on to the site.
I have been very busy due to some personal reasons. The selection team completed their fine work a few months back. I just could not get my part done.
It is behind us now, I hope soon we will receive high resolution images and the next phase of the book design may start in the near future!

Thanks in advance for your support.
Ganesh H. Shankar
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby Ganesh H Shankar » Sat Sep 23, 2017 7:07 pm

We have been making a very slow (I take the blame for most of it) but rock study progress on the book. After the rigorous image selections by the selection team we printed them all to check the quality and to prepare them for the final design. This has been a tedious process. But at the end we are now ready to go to the next step! I was amazed to see the prints myself today, needless to say it was a very satisfying day as a photographer. I had several opportunities to serve as a member of jury panel of several nature photo contests. Honestly, I have not seen such a unique collection so far. If everything goes well as planned we will have a very memorable book. Here are a few images of the CNPians who have been working hard without compromising on the quality that we are aiming for! Please stay tuned for slow but steady updates :)

img2.jpg
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An uphill task!




img3.jpg
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An amazing array of images!




img4.jpg
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Some sense of achievement at the end!

Miles to go before we sleep..
Ganesh H. Shankar
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby Samyak » Sat Sep 23, 2017 8:18 pm

Wow... already excited to see it in the hand !
Thank you team for shaping this up so well !!
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby Sriharsha Ganjam » Wed Sep 27, 2017 12:06 am

Super excited! Great work team!!!
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby swapnil19 » Mon Oct 02, 2017 11:47 am

very happy to see this !! the process of creation and to see the actual fruit of all the strenuous efforts by the team is immensely satisfactory
hearty congratulations!!!
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby Adithya Biloor » Mon Oct 30, 2017 1:49 pm

Hi,

The process has moved one more step. Yesterday Ganesh and RD have visited many printers.

The amount of energy, time , effort put by RD, Raj, Ramesh, Ganesh and other members of the team in Bangalore is tremendous. Each and every image is carefully analysed, sorted, making sure that no stone is untouched. I am sure the book will be one of it's kind. A big applause for their committment and work.

Adithya
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby Ganesh H Shankar » Wed Nov 01, 2017 11:52 am

This final step of getting the print with the right quality makes us worrying. Not everything is under our control here. We will not hurry here getting it printed somehow by someone. We will try to do our best working with parameters under our control. Please be patient :)

The biggest issue is matching the color and tonal ranges of your prints as seen on a calibrated display to the print on a paper. What you see on your calibrated display (if you keep it calibrated!) is not what you get if you print it. The paper is a reflective surface and monitor is a transmissive medium. The color gamut of monitor and papers are very different. Not all the colors/tonal ranges that you see on your display can be matched on the paper. How will we handle these while printing? Further not all of you might have prepared the image in a precisely (hardware calibrated) display. We had to make some gentle corrections where required (thanks to RD for doing it on a finely calibrated Eizo display) before we made the proof digital prints. Offset printing comes with another challenge, it uses CMYK colors and not RGB.

Here is the print making workflow

Camera -> Raw File with an embedded ICC Profile (Like for example Nikon RGB) [step 1] -> Seen on a calibrated display with a different profile (like sRBG) [step 2] -> Converted to CMYK profile for offset printing or Fine Art Paper profile [step 3] -> Book or Print

There are two routes to make a book. One, using a print on demand service (like blurb.com), other option is using offset printing. Offset printing is cost effective for large number of copies (>100 I guess). Print on demand is very expensive but we can get just a single copy too. In our case we need to take offset printing route to make it more affordable. What this means is we have another task ahead - converting all the images that we have now to CMYK and soft proofing it on a calibrated display again [step 3]!! ( RD, I hope you are reading it, we have one more job to complete before the final proof print :) )

This below video explains the color management workflow involved. Check the soft proofing information around the middle of this below video. My experience of soft proofing for fine art papers is that it is necessary but not sufficient!! While the whole process is scientific the limitation of conversions between different mediums (screen/papers) makes it an art!



Please stay tuned! We hope to do a good job, slow and study wins the race :)
Ganesh H. Shankar
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby dinesh.ramarao » Sat Mar 24, 2018 3:54 pm

one step closer.
- RD
- RD
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby dinesh.ramarao » Sat Mar 31, 2018 10:58 am

IMG_20180324_114823150_3.jpg
IMG_20180324_114823150_3.jpg (65.97 KiB) Viewed 51507 times


We are progressing.
Quicker steps now.

-RD
- RD
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby Ganesh H Shankar » Sat Mar 31, 2018 8:16 pm

Fingers crossed :)

Thanks RD, for multiple trips to printing presses, fine art paper vendors etc!
Ganesh H. Shankar
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby Ganesh H Shankar » Sun Apr 15, 2018 12:49 pm

Friends,

We have been working very hard on this. We are almost ready for the actual print of the first test draft of the entire 3 volume series!

Please stay tuned for more updates.
Ganesh H. Shankar
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby krishnan v » Mon Apr 16, 2018 10:10 pm

Excited !
Heck its a 3 volume series ! WOW !

Appreciate the effort and attention to detail by everyone involved.
Best Regards
---Krish
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby dinesh.ramarao » Sat Apr 21, 2018 3:37 pm

Weekends are busy but filled with passion and fun,
towards the proof reading draft print
-RD
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Re: CNP Coffee Table Book - The Plan

Postby Nevil Zaveri » Sat Apr 28, 2018 2:23 am

that's great news! respect to the magnanimous effort of the whole crew :)
regards.
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