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September 13, 2008 Meeting Newsletter Warren Walker described how he creates his Vermont Wildflower calendars. Midge shared her Kiwanis photographs by storing them online in Webshots. Neil Raphel found Eugene Levine’s PicLens which required Firefox is now available as CoolIris and works with Safari. In the raffle, Warren won The Digital Photography Book from Peachpit Press, and Midge won The Digital Photography Book 2. Information about both books and links to their contents and sample chapters are available in Reviews. And, we had a fire alarm. Creating Vermont Wildflower Calendars Warren brought in his new iMac. He has a case for it, and estimates that it weighs about 20 pounds. He bought it on June 15 for is birthday. So far he has used it for initial editing, but has not yet tried to print with it. Warren creates calendars with beautiful images of native Vermont wildflowers. I asked him to tell us about it beginning with how he finds and photographs the flowers. Some flower guides show flowers native to the United States, but they generally do not identify those that are native to Vermont. USDA Plants Database contains much information but is no help in identifying those native to Vermont. A lot of hiking guides describe the environment and types of plants, some even list plants on a specific trail. There is good book with pictures of Wild Flowers of Vermont by Kate Carter with the dates and sites where she took the pictures. Most often Warren has to find the type of habitat required by a wildflower, and then find where that type of habitat is located. He often is trying to find a specific wildflower. He always has go hiking to find them. After he has found the wildflowers, he goes to look for many them year after year to get a better picture and sometimes it is with a better camera. He started making the wildflower calendars as Xmas presents. He decided to try to sell enough to pay for the gifts. His first calendar was a big one. Each page had to be run through by hand. He put them together using a punch and plastic binding. It had a black and white cover to save a few cents. He created it using Illustrator. Only half of the wildflowers were native to Vermont. He took the pictures with a 2 meg Coolpix 900. He chose a paper with one side glossy. He used an Epson printer and put the image on the glossy side and descriptive information on the other side. The next version was half size to print two on a page. He printed 30, half as presents. He had to cut and bind them by hand. Warren knows a person who had 3,000 calendars printed in Canada for $10,000. She hoped to sell them through stores each selling 50 copies, but most stores carry only 5 or 10 copies of a calendar. He is sure that she lost money. When Toll Press added digital printing it was less expensive for the initial setup. Warren bought 130 calendars for $900. The quality was not as good as his prints, and it was printed with the picture on one side and the calendar on the other which was not what people expected. He gave most of them away. He bound the next calendar himself. When folded the inner pages protrude some which makes a noticeable difference in structural quality. The edges are not quite square and even, but it is not noticeable when hanging on the wall. The calendar required 13 pages. The folded paper has 14 pages. So he used the back page to provide additional information.
He prints them two up on 11 x 16 paper, making sure he turns if for each page to avoid upside down images. He uses double sided mat paper treated on both sides for printing from Red River - The cover is 52 pound stock which does not feed well through his printer. The 32 pound interior stock stack feeds through his printer. He uses about 4 ink cartridges for a dozen calendars. He had to get a paper cutter and a special stapler with a 12 inch reach. Warren sold 40 calendars last year. He actually made about one dollar each, if he does not count his time. His current calendars are printed on 11 x 17 inch paper which he trims with an 18” rotary cutter. His printer will handle up to 12 x 19 inches. In the morning before the meeting he cut the calendars he brought with him. He had boxes of them at home ready to be cut. People like his calendars because of the narrow size. It hangs well in spaces they have available. He sells enough to pay for the cost of producing them. The problem with commercial distribution would be lining up 1,000 stores to sell five each. He has to sell them for $8 to $10 just to cover the cost of printing. With the store’s markup they would cost $16 to $20 which would be too expensive. Warren now uses a tripod for his pictures which gives him the option to use a smaller aperture for more depth of field. Often he still has to use a larger aperture for a faster shutter speed because of the wind. You could solve the wind problem by using cutting flowers from your garden and taking them inside. Warren said you are not supposed to remove anything from a state forest, although some do walk out with a walking stick. Warren showed us a card for the 25th Fall Foliage Craft Fair in the Hardwick elementary school from 10 - 4 on Saturday October 4, and from 10 - 3 on Sunday October 5. If you want to look at or buy one of his Vermont Wildflower Calendars, that would be fun place to do it. Midge Lubot and Webshots Midge Lubot said that when she is typing the Kiwanis newsletter and is not watching the screen, and then looks at the screen, it has become blank. She wondered why everything she has typed disappears. A number of possible reasons were suggested including static in dry locations and pressure on the case. She was advised not to rest her hands on her laptop while she is typing. MIdge takes lots of pictures of local and district Kiwanis events and only publishes a few. She learned about Webshots, http://www.webshots.com where you can store pictures for free online. She has uploaded pictures, and has copied the screen view using Command-Shift-4, but had not yet learned how people can download full resolution images to email to people. Fire Alarm I was wearing new hearing aids, and believe me I could hear the fire alarm when it went off. We packed up our computers and went out front next to the St. Johnsbury Fire Department truck.
The fire was was just some batteries that got overheated in a safe work closet.
Gene sent us an email about PicLens. Neil Raphel explored it and discovered a newer version CoolIris which works with Safari. The online preview calls is PicLens. It is a software program. It presents information from selected online sites s images on a wall that you can scan, select, and enlarge to view. Here is a picture on Neil’s laptop. Gene thinks it is pretty neat. Neil did not seem to be as impressed. It is free, so if you are interested check it out at http://www.cooliris.com |
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He has modified templates over time for his calendars. The cover text is editable with a glow around it. The templates are in different layers in Photoshop.
Gene Levine bought a Canon Powershot G9 and a Canon printer. During the interruption Gene showed some of his large prints. He is obviously happy with his camera.
And Gene looked at Warren’s 2009 calendar.