140 ☼ Getting Started: Finding the Right Concept for Your Photo Book or Zine
GIVEAWAY: $150 gift certificate for the Moment shop
This issue kicks off a 10-part series guiding you through the step-by-step process of making your very own book or zine. Join me as I share my firsthand experience creating NOTICE Journal, Volume One, and get inspired to work on your own project.
Dear friends,
In this week's letter, we get into the very first step of making a photo book or zine, and in this case my upcoming book NOTICE Journal, Volume 1: Finding the right concept or idea to build a book around.
Important Reminder: all these steps also work for less time and money-intensive endeavors like making a hand-printed zine or creating an online portfolio. Don’t let the imposter syndrome tell you that you cannot make an impactful body of work just because you don’t have the means to print a book right now.
Also in this issue: a fantastic Process Giveaway with my friends at Moment who made available a $150 gift certificate to their online photography shop.
☀️ Shout out to the good folks at Squarespace for helping make this issue possible ☀️
Housekeeping
New Mentor Sessions — I have opened up a small number of mentoring sessions for the next period. Book yours here. Below is a quote from talented photographer Mine Manap Turel after her recent session:
“Wesley's mentor session helped me find two project ideas. More than that, it helped me silence the voices in my mind that were telling me I wasn't good enough as a photographer. Everyone needs to experience Wesley's helpful and understanding guidance.”
Starting The Process of Making A Book or Zine
There's something truly electric about working on a photo book—whether it's diving into the creative process of curating and editing the works of others or delving into my own personal projects. When I work on a book, I find myself invigorated and fully immersed in the world of storytelling. When I'm deep into the process of creating, my passion for photography as a profession and art form truly lights up.
The book project I'm currently pouring my heart and soul into is titled "NOTICE Journal, Volume One," or "NJV1" for short. You might have figured out from the name that it's a sort of a sequel to my previous monograph, "NOTICE." (see below)
"NOTICE" was born from an immersive period: 123 days of meditative photo walks, clocking over 800 miles through the quiet streets of Vancouver's suburbs. That's 1230 kilometers for the metric folks, or about 307 hours of walking, or 1.6 million steps, according to my iPhone step logs. It sounds pretty insane in hindsight.
With my new book project "NJV1", I hope to extend that sense of wonder and curiosity, and invite you to join me in exploring our immediate surroundings with an attentive and calming gaze. This time, I am going even deeper and I’ve added some creative challenges for myself, more on that below.
Step 1 — Conceptualize The Book Idea + The Context
First, I have to give you some context for "NJV1", before digging into the book itself.
The Context — Starting a Series
The "volume one" part of the title is a hint at something I've been itching to do for quite some time—to publish an ongoing series of small photo books that share a common format and design, steadily building a library over many years.
The common thread running through this series is the ongoing practice of noticing beauty and wonder, in all its varied and surprising manifestations.
At the heart of this practice is my belief that beauty isn't hard to find, but can easily be overlooked.
Each book will explore various topics within this theme. Future volumes may feature street portraits, the landscapes of Japan, unique communities the American South, among others. The possibilities are as diverse and captivating as the world around us.
With this series, I want to inspire myself and others to pause, look more closely, and develop a richer, more meaningful connection to our surroundings and each other. To that end, I will include an essay with a photo challenge in each volume.
(Below a picture from our book shelf, featuring two book series that have always inspired me with the desire to make a series: Penguin’s Great Ideas, and the Wildsam travel guides.)
The Concept Behind Volume One
For the first volume, I'm focusing "NOTICE"-inspired street scenes and still lifes from long photo walks around Amsterdam during the past two springs seasons.
The work I made during these walks mirrored some challenging changes in my life, which later evolved into a sense of renewal and excitement. Spring, with its mix of humor, nostalgia, melancholy, and confusion, provided the perfect backdrop for the photos I was making—each reflecting both the season and my personal experiences.
For this body of work I used only one camera, one lens, and one film stock. The entire body of work was shot with a Olympus Pen-F with a 38mm f2.8 lens, loaded up with Double-X black and white film.
The Pen-F is a half-frame camera, which is captures two photos on a single frame of 35mm film, effectively doubling your shot count and offering a unique way to tell stories by creating diptychs in-camera. A diptych is a combination of two images placed side by side, creating a visual dialogue that invites viewers to explore the connections and contrasts between the paired scenes. (See below)
My previous book "NOTICE" also consisted of diptychs, but those were created in the editing process by pairing images, sometimes taken weeks apart, and displaying them on opposing pages. Here is an example:
By using a half-frame camera for "NJV1", I took the concept of diptychs a step further. In this case, all pairings were created in-camera. This introduced a big element of serepidity and chance, since I wasn’t keeping track of which frame I was on or how the next picture would relate to the previous one.
It was only in the developing and scanning phase that I discovered the eventual pairings, this time without any intervention by myself. It’s been a thrilling experience for me to let go of that control and see how it comes together.
Takeaways
When creating a book or zine, the concept often boils down to setting a few creative boundaries or constraints. These parameters act as a compass, guiding the artistic process and helping to shape the final product into something truly unique.
In this case, for "NJV1" that means:
One city, one camera, one lens, one film stock, one season.
Photographing spring time street moments and still lives that mirror personal life changes, both in challenging and very exciting ways.
Embracing photography as a meditative practice, learning to slow down and truly appreciate the beauty that surrounds us.
Reveal the value in not just admiring beauty but in the act of seeking it out amid the rhythms of daily life.
Creating diptychs in-camera allowing chance to play a significant role in creating the stories captured.
Consider that it’s the first in an ongoing diverse series of books.
Below is an outtake I love but which is not making it into the book because it doesn’t quite fit:
Upcoming Steps
I am excited to share all the upcoming steps of making "NJV1" with you and dig into both the details and the overarching thought process. Let me know in the comments if there are any other aspects of zine or book making you’d like to learn about.
Up Next, in future issues of Process:
Step 1 ☼ Finding The Right Concept to Build a Book Around
Step 2 ☼ How To Select and Organize Your Images
Step 3 ☼ How To Sequence Your Images and Build a Narrative
Step 4 ☼ Designing A Layout (As A Non-Designer)
Step 5 + 6 ☼ How To Make A Photo Book Dummy + Revise/Edit
Step 7 ☼ How To Write and Use Text In Your Photo Book or Zine
Step 8 ☼ How To Make Smart Design Choices For Your Photo Book
Step 9 — Choosing your printer
Step 10 — Marketing your book
Step 11 — How to set up a Preorder
Step 11 — Press coverage and partnerships
Step 12 — How to launch your photo book
If you enjoyed this issue I’d love for you to share it with friends.
Next Week: I might go straight into step two of this process, though I also have some new work I am in love with that I haven’t shown anywhere yet. TBD.
Keep shooting and take good care of yourselves and others. <3
Wesley
PS Would you like to support Process? Order a copy of my photo book NOTICE. <3
PPS Thank you for all the wonderful messages in response to last week’s issue on losing and re-discovering my creative voice. It seems to have resonated with many of you. Thank you and please share it with friends who might struggle with this.
Gear & Tools Used
Camera: Olympus Pen-F + 38mm lens. Canon 5D Mark IV + Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L USM lens. Pentax LX, Pentax 67ii.
Film Stocks: Double X, Kodak Tri-X.
Shout out to MPB.com, my go-to place to buy, sell, and trade used cameras and lenses. I love their service and am a paying customer. MPB caters to over 625,000 visual storytellers and provides a 6-month warranty. Thanks for the support, MPB! <3
Lab: All my analog work is developed and scanned by my friends at Carmencita Film Lab. They’re my favorite lab in the world. Use code “PROCESS” to get a free upgrade.
Website: Shout out to Squarespace for supporting Process. If you need a website, I highly recommend using Squarespace. I’ve been a paying customer for over 10 years (!!?). It’s an easy, professional, and affordable way to have a beautiful portfolio website and webshop. Use the code PROCESS10 for 10% off your first order.
Process Giveaway
My pals over at Moment are back for a generous giveaway! One winner will receive a $150 gift card to buy whatever you wish including film, bags, a course, and more.
To enter this week’s giveaway answer the following question in the comments:
Q: What concept or idea would you like to build a zine or book around this year?
It can be straight forward, like street photography in your town, or something more conceptual like documenting a local farm’s harvesting season. Don’t be shy and ignore that imposter syndrome telling you nonsense about how you shouldn’t make a zine.
ENTER THIS WEEK’S GIVEAWAY before 11 a.m. EST on April 27th.
The winner will be randomly drawn. This giveaway is for Process subscribers only.
I got a new job! I'll be traveling up and down the Mississippi River for a year. I want to make a zine centered around that experience and the river and it's people. I grew up in Memphis so the topic feels like coming home in a way.
I've been working for a while taking photos of handmade traffic signs, especially with no parking signs. This is a pretty much common thing here in Brazil and it's peculiar the way which place decides to show this kind of information. So the idea is share the varieties of signs that I've noticed this past few years.