YWO Index – Book
One year ago I decided to start up a new project called Yesterday Was Only wherein I post at least one photo every day of the year. It quickly became routine for me to carry my camera everywhere and while there were plenty of days where I had to stretch my standards to get a shot in, I am still proud of the work as a whole.
Looking back through the photos on YWO I feel humbled by my own life. These were not taken to impress, nor to gain viewers or be part of some kind of movement. It started as a way to drive myself to stay active with my camera through a busy year. When I look back through these images I notice that, although life seems to move by all too quickly at times, we accomplish a lot more than we think we do in a single year.
As short as a single day feels at times, this project has been a great reminder that I can still sneak in a little creativity during even the most busy of days. Browsing this backlog shows me that despite not having any grand adventures in other countries, I was still able to see and experience so much. There are a lot of forgotten moments hiding in these photographs.
The biggest impact I think it had on me as a photographer was on my post editing which has seen a big shift this year. For a long while I was hooked on overly warm colors and minimal editing to the point of it being almost a fault at times. While I still do as little as possible when editing, after working steadily day in and day out on so many different images I feel I have refined my post editing skill quite a bit over the past year and its really interesting to browse through a year’s worth of images in one place and see that evolution.
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YWO Index v.1 Details:
My reason in writing today is to not only mark the occasion but announce a book to commemorate the projects first year. I am calling it the Yesterday Was Only Index v.1 and it will include every single image posted to the site over the course of the past year, 1,068 images in all.
In researching the best way to do this my original plan was to create a fat, newsprint catalogue with one image on every page. However, my ambition runs deeper than my pockets are able to fund so I am taking a simpler approach. The book will be 5”x5” (127mm) and contain around 180 pages with six 2” (50.8mm) photos on each page. I have chosen a nice uncoated paper for the printing.
It will be Wire Bound with a brown chipboard cover I will stamp by hand with the title which will, in my mind, help it stay within my original concept of it being akin to an appendix for the site, a literal catalogue that is a physical reproduction of the content shared on the site. There will be no words along with the photographs, only the images themselves and a brief introduction.
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Ordering/Edition:
I am not limiting the amount of books sold but this will be the one and only run of the book. If you do not order now there will not be another opportunity to buy it in the future, once these first copies are gone, thats it. I will sign and number each copy based on the amount of them that are ordered when ordering closes.
Each book is $30USD for U.S. readers and $35USD for any orders outside the U.S. (This price includes shipping.)
All orders are Pre-Orders which will be open for three weeks. I will most likely close orders on Feb 24th. Please note, books will be shipped as soon as they arrive in my hands which should be within the first couple weeks of March. If there are not enough orders to at least break even on the cost I will issue a full refund.
On that note, please show your support and help spread the word whether you are buying a copy or not! I would love to see this book get made and I need your help to do it. If enough orders come in I may have a little bonus for you guys as well!
For U.S.residents, click here to order.
Anyone outside of the U.S. please, click here to order.
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This is just the beginning of a lot of fun things to come. I have made a conscious decision to put more time and resources into kicking things up this year. I have planned a few ideas to death but realized the only way anything will ever get done is to just jump in and give it my all. Thanks, as always, for your support!
Why no captions for the photos? That’s part of what makes the photos interesting? Without any text like a date, it’s hard to even go back and find the original on the site.
Logistically, getting all of the photos to fit in one book that is being manufactured in a short run, as well as fitting words in there would be tricky if not impossible. I did consider more of a “best of” kind of book but this kind of thing always runs the risk of having someones personal favorite excluded. I have not ruled out adding dates in the corners of each page that give away the time frame they were posted in through the year.
The concept here was to have a simplified collection of photographs from this daily experiment which was always meant to be seen as a whole. A visual guide to the places and situations I found myself in as well as random details from my daily life that would normally go undocumented. The book was to act as a means to collect this narrative into a printed form to be seen as more of a compendium of images that represent my year visually without the need for words or the narrative they may or may not have helped build.
The only reason I started adding little quips and comments on the photographs to begin with was someones comment about wanting a title so the RSS feed of the site didn’t feel so empty. Early on I had planned on the photos being without any words at all, leaving the viewer to fill in details and leave room for a bit of ambiguous mystery in there.
There are two different camps here when it comes to writing and photography, those who feel a photograph needs a title and description to be compelling and those who do not. I sit between these two viewpoints because in my mind it all depends on the photographers goals in sharing and in this case it was always about the modesty of the photograph alone.
I think I am overcomplicating it here heh. Mostly it was the logistic issue that prevented me from including more words this time around.
[…] this point, one year has passed and a limited run book is on its way featuring the images selected to share with everyone on Yesterday Was Only from day […]