Although I have a lot of fun sharing photographs on social media, I like to see my photos in print. I could print them, frame them and put them on the walls of my house. But I don’t actually have a lot of wall space for displaying photos so that’s pretty much out. I could just print them (maybe frame them) and then give them to friends e.g. when invited to a party I could print along a framed print instead of a bottle of wine? But I’m pretty sure that they’d appreciate the wine more than the framed photograph. Or I could print them, put them in a folder or a box and then probably forget about them entirely until I discover them ten years from now…if I’m still around.

Instead of any of the above options I’ve decided to do photobooks instead. Over the years I’ve done a number of glossy photobooks, but I’ve discovered that they take me a long time to complete. They’re also quite expensive and I have a knack for getting something wrong e.g. I might find that a typeface I thought looked good on screen didn’t work well in print; or I get the spacing wrong; or while proofreading I catch most of the grammatical/spelling mistake but inevitably miss a few etc. Then I have to go back, and fix these problems and re-order the book. Let’s say I spent $60 on the first photobook. Now I have to spend another $60.

Instead I’ve decided to try ‘zines’. While they’re not as nice looking as photobooks I can produce one fairly quickly and they don’t cost very much (the examples in this post each cost no more than $15). So even if I have to redo them I’m only out $30. Of course if I really like one I can use the ‘zine’ as a proof copy, and quickly transform it into a more flashy photobook.

So far it’s working pretty well. I’ve recently done four ‘zines’ in two series.

I’ve lived in the Lower Hudson valley for the past 23 years. For much of that time I commuted into New York City for work. I was lucky that the commute was a very pleasant one. The New York Metro-North Railroad Hudson Line runs right next to the Hudson River and for much of it’s length offers picturesque views across the Hudson to (among other things) The Palisades; The Hudson Highlands; Storm King Mountain etc. Over the years I’ve visited and photographed many of the towns along the river. I anticipate doing a number of these ‘zines’ – each one focusing on a single town (or part of a town as some of them are quite large). For the same reason I’ve decided to focus on those areas, which are close enough that I can comfortably walk to them from the railroad station. With my customary lack of creativity I’ve decided to call this series “Rivertowns”. So far I’ve done two in this series: “On Albany Post Road in Tarrytown” and “Dobbs Ferry”. This series combines photographs with quite a lot of text describing them.

During COVID it was not possible to travel as much as I had been doing. I therefore confined myself to walks in the immediate vicinity of my house and started a series of photographs, which I decided to call “Around the Neighborhood”. I defined this as meaning anywhere that I could walk back and forth to from my house. So far I’ve done two ‘zines’ in this series. The first, entitled “A Tree” has as its subject a single tree in a nearby woodland. I’d already taken a number of pictures of this but on this occasion I decided on the spur of the moment to attempt an exercise that I’d recently read about. This exercise consisted of taking thirty six photographs of a single subject all at once. Quite easy at first, but after about twenty photographs increasingly more difficult. In fact at that point I almost gave up, but I stuck with it and in the end found it to be quite useful. I’m the kind of person who will walk up to a subject, take a few pictures and then move on. This exercise made me slow down and look more carefully. Indeed, towards the end I was noticing things, which I had already walked past a couple of times. The second, entitled “A Pond” focuses on a sad, lonely looking pond. What makes it interesting is that it’s on the site of the former Briarcliff Lodge, a 1902 vintage luxury resort in the village of Briarcliff Manor, New York where I live. It’s said that this pond was once the Lodge’s swimming pool. Local legend has it that if you were to dive to the bottom you’d find tiles.