Sigh, bigger sigh, high five! After a year and a half, I finally hit the Send button and got the photos for my upcoming beer book into the editor. Well, “Send” would not be accurate. I used a cloud software called Dropbox, which allows you to upload photos, organize them and then Share them with other people only you can choose.
This photo process seemed to take forever, but truth be told, I am a writer and I had other projects percolating. But looking back to 1995, the year I signed the contract for the first What’s Brewing in New England, I was also responsible for taking and/or providing the images. The technology then was simpler: get out the one-pound Pentax K-1000, focus the lens, check the light meter and “click!” Send film into some film company to develop, write captions for the photos that came out well, send to editor.
The Dropbox process was much harder, but then again, this was a new technology for me and there was a learning curve with a “steep” factor like K-2 or Everest. In the end, I did the right thing and hired John Goodine at Elm City Photo in my town of Waterville. John changed my color digital pics to black and white and 300 dpi. Do I know what any of that means? Yes, wise guy, I do know black and white. DPI? Naw. That was John’s job. And now it’s done.
One thing that hangs me up a lot is this issue of wanting everything I do to be perfect. I’m working on knowing that good enough is good enough. Perfect is impossible. So here is a bit of a preview of only some of the photos that will appear in What’s Brewing in New England, redux. Publication in 2015, I hope and pray.
Stay tuned! Many more to come.