Want to know more about me? How about my opinion on things? Well, you have Gina Milicia to thank. She and I sat down half a world apart and had a little talk about all things photography and all things social media. Or rather all things without social media. This is such a fascinating topic for me. Seriously, one I never tire of because not a day goes by I don’t see or hear something that makes me realize how dangerous these platforms are and how invasive they have become.
And the simple truth is you don’t need ANY of these platforms. We go to great lengths to convince ourselves we do, which is precisely why they are so addictive, but the reality is we had a better life before them and we have the potential to have a decent life after if they don’t kill us in the short term. Here is a terrifying little reminder if you feel like taking chances.
Many thanks to Gina for taking the time to include me.
Comments 19
I’ve been off FB for a year. It’s been great. Two reasons, this linked article is one. The other is described in this article, which I may have seen because of you. Keep it up!
https://link.medium.com/gWHL0QYyL2
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Tommy,
Great find. I keep telling people the same and they all look at me like I’m crazy. “No, I have to be on it.” And then you dive in and realize they are simply too hooked on the constant online feedback. The noise is the fentanyl of 2020.
Great. Looking forward to listening to this.
And you’re right – Life really is better without social media. No Facebook, Twitter, Strava, or Instagram for me. Just my little’ol WordPress blog that nobody reads 🙂
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Sean,
I love your blog! And I love you but only because I have achieved perfect harmony with all living creatures…
LOVED chatting with Daniel. You inspire me. Thanks for everything you do for the photography community.
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Gina,
Get ready for Uncle Dan to show up at the house. I love Australia/Australians. Again, thank you for taking the time.
Listened and loved it. Lots and lots of valuable advice. As I’ve mentioned before Fujifilm have something similar to Blurb here in Japan and it’s so cheap it makes no sense not to print stuff. I’ve just come back from my second winter trip to Hokkaido. I have a stack of images from this year and last year with hopefully one or two that are useable. I’ll make a book, keep going back year after year, gathering images (and experiences) and then one day I might have something half-decent. No need for any social media at all.
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Sean,
I’m coming to Japan and I’m showing up at your house. Get ready. I just made the decision.
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Sean,
PS: I’m coming to your house AND I’m going to ask for your ID.
Give me a shout if you ever do come here. I’ll take you into the mountains.
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I’m coming. Sooner rather than later. And yes, I’m coming to your house. Unannounced.(not really.)
Sean,
What is the name of the Fujifilm print service?
I just left Japan in November – and will be turning around in May to go back.
Please and Thank You.
Aaron
Hi Aaron,
Here’s a link. http://f-photobook.jp
Great interview. I’ve heard most of it here and there in other interviews and in writing, but nice to be able so sit through a good, thoughtful, unrushed interview.
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Scott,
Gina is awesome. We spoke for an hour before the podcast even began.
Hi Daniel,
As an Aussie, I’ve been listening to Gina’s podcast for a while and I really enjoyed your interview.
I particularly loved the ideas of a “burner” book and a business-card-as-a-book, and am about to start working on both.
So!
I wondered if you had any suggestions (or links to discussions) for a subset of fonts and font sizes and colours to play with? I promise to not try to make the burner book perfect, but drilling down to a smaller set of choices would be helpful as I wrestle with white background vs black background etc 🙂
Thanks heaps!
Author
Hey Megan,
Sure. I’ve got a few ideas and thank you for listening to the interview. The burner book can be helpful in a variety of ways and typography is one of those ways. My advice with the burner book is to take one line of copy, in a font you think you might want to utilize, and run that line of copy at nine point, ten point, twelve point, fourteen, eighteen, twenty-four, etc. As for color, I would first play with density, pulling back from full black to shades of gray. And one more thing, would be careful with black backgrounds. Very difficult to make that work well. I used to do this all the time when I started making books but rarely do it now.
Hey Daniel,
Thanks very much for the font and density tips, and the warning against using black backgrounds (I’ve been using black backgrounds for all my LR/Blurb books).
I was hoping there’d be a Lightroom template but instead I’ve had to choose Word for Mac. I think Word has undergone some changes since the MagCloud PDF guidelines were written (Microsoft Word for Mac 16.32 does not have a Publishing Layout View, guides are gone…) so there’ll be a lot of trial and error.
Luckily, it’s a burner book!
🙂
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Megan,
The other thought I forgot to mention is finding a font library like dafont.com. You have options of using free fonts or making contributors for others. You can then download and install and widen your font choices dramatically. Black backgrounds can work wonderfully but at other times can dominate the entire look and feel. I went back through my photobook collection, around 400 monograph style books and only a handful had black pages. It made me rethink and relearn. Magcloud is great for the burner…so inexpensive.