Blurb

I recently finished (well sort of) a book of my black and white photographs and had it printed by Blurb. It's not available, and frankly too expensive in hard cover and 12X12 for purchasing, but I wanted to see the quality and to 'test' the concept of such a book.

Although I did check it, there are bugs - looks like one of the images I must have sent them a web sized file, and I need to edit the text and get the title that I had assumed they would put up but didn't.

The book looks very nice. The cover printed very well, images front and back. The granularity of the images is a bit coarse, you don't notice it at first or with all images, but not ideal. Tonality is very good - the images hang together well, and I'm fussy. Colour wise, they all have a selenium toned look which is pleasing. Shadows and highlights are very well printed.

Overall I'm very pleased. I had heard that Blurb prints in Calgary and I even know a fellow who went to the print shop to get his book, but this came from Vancouver. More than likely printing quality varies with where the printing is done. I have seen books with finer screen printing, and books with much worse colour for black and white images, but considering this is a one off book, remarkably good.

To put things in perspective - this book printed better than 95% of the photographic books of 20 years ago, that's how far we have progressed.

After a bit more editing I might make the book available as a paper back.

George