Hmmm. I saved the (originally posted) pdf to my dropbox, and I can see all the pages on my phone, but I can NOT see them on my iMac. Only pages 2-4 have any text on them on my iMac. It's weird since I can access the same file (literally, through Dropbox) on my phone and see everything.
Edit: well the revised pdf is showing up through Safari in Dropbox, so I'll just read that one. 🙂
I think I have worked it out, at export I made the first version supposedly have copy protection. It appears that iBooks Author can do bizarre things when exporting as a PDF in this regards. I haven't done that with the next version.
Well done Alex and a tremendous start.
The most significant barrier for me to be more mindful of photography and the photography experience is that my OCD tendencies start to kick-in and my focus shifts to the purely technical aspects of what I'm doing. It's a challenge for me to be in the moment and enjoy it while completing my mental checklist. I feel that you've addressed this but...
I really like kenoh's comments and agree 100% with each, especially #2. IMO, be careful with quotes, excerpts and anything that starts to feel or sound too technical. I'm not suggesting that you leave them out. Just don't give the reader anything else to add to their mental checklist. As Ken said, you can do this by making it more personal. I believe you're in a position to do that, so take full advantage of it.
Excellent work. Keep it up Alex.
~ Peter
Thanks, Peter.
I've gotten to the point where I actively spend the time going through the technicalities of what I'm about to do well before doing it. So that I can try and just be in the moment of exploring and capturing. If I do start having the technical thoughts sneak back in, I acknowledge them, then I just take a few deep breaths, recenter myself and try to notice new things about what I'm capturing, so a to get back into it again.
I had wondered whether the quotes were too lengthy here, I'll look at how they can be abbreviated and have more lived experience incorporated there. I live with a couple of academics, and sort of headed off in that direction with this part.
Thanks again for your feedback, every bit is helping me out in regards to the refinement of it.
Okay, here are some thoughts.
I think you should find a decent editor/copywriter. There are some inconsistencies as to when/where you are capitalizing Mindful. There are also a few misspellings ("judgement" a couple of times, although elsewhere it was spelled properly as "judgment") and other minor grammatical things (spaces before and after dashes vs. not, which can make a difference in formatting/line breaks; a couple of punctuation outside of quotations; stuff like that). I also think you might be overly liberal with your use of exclamation points. 🙄 I like the writing style just fine, but feel it needs to be refined a bit more. Same with consistency of fonts throughout headers/on photos, etc. And as an extremely nit-picky and personal critique, I find the monospaced typeface you use for most of your photo captions to be very out dated. I would find a cleaner, more modern font.
Page 11:
Many things are decided upon when taking a picture with a real camera.
What is a "real camera"? Will people who only have a phone camera be or feel excluded? Although I prefer the image quality from a dSLR, there are times when I am out with only my phone, but if I am using my eyes well, I can be mindful and still take a decent photo.
ETA, as I read through I see you mention more on this on page 24, but I still hesitate to really exclude iPhoneography. I have seen some stunning portfolios from people who use nothing but their phone. In some ways your concept of mindfulness might apply more to them to those of us more traditional shooters, just because they *do* have more distractions. But of course this is your book and not mine. 🙂
Otherwise I agree with Ken's assessment. And add more photos. A book about photography should not be stingy with examples. I know the book isn't finished yet, but for an example, with your II exercise of shooting one image 20 ways, put in your 20-version image. Make it relatable to the reader.
Love, love, love the idea of this. I am a photographer and a scrapbooker, but as my kids get older, they are around less and less, and one of my goals for 2018 is to shoot more for myself. It was easy when they were babies and preschoolers, around me most of the day. But now they are in school or at sports, and unless I am shooting an event (Christmas, birthday) or one of their swim meets, TKD belt tests....I miss out on shooting. So I would love to read this fleshed out to help me find inspiration in my non-kid day to day life. 🙂
Molly, you get a big, WOW too! Thank you so much for your analytical eye and the time spent sharing that with me.
Regarding an editor or copywriter, I'm afraid I'm it. It's not something I can afford to do at this stage.
Thanks for the observations of the finer details, I will correct them and keep an eye out for consistencies in the future. I'm afraid you folks are going to have to accept Australian/British spelling. I will keep a firm eye out for spellcheck allowing through Americanisms though, so that it is consistent.
Regarding mindfulness and mobile phones, with the various groups I was part of through mental health NGO's where mobile phone usage was the norm, it didn't happen for many people as a regularity, regardless of having a theme for the outings and the support worker and I trying to assist people with focusing on something. People were constantly using them for a quick this or that, just to stay in touch and keep abreast with the world and the moments were lost or never reached in the first place.
When we switched to using the cameras I had sourced, this changed. The participants started having Mindful experiences with very little effort and were able to keep the space for much longer times. Getting to a state of Flow and remaining there occurred easily too. This is what my little Happy Snappers thing is all about. Maybe I should share that sort of thing early on in the ebook, so people can understand where I am coming from clearer. One NGO has had apoplexies about the possibility of me mentioning anything to do with their program or the participants, so it's a little murky as to what I can and can't actually talk about in that regards, even if I don't mention their name or where the groups were based. I've had three meetings with management about this already and have had to tweak wordings on my site to appease them. Other NGO's have no such problems and don't mind me mentioning them at all, in fact they foster and promote partnerships. Gotta love overprotective bureaucracy at play!
I too have seen some fabulous images from mobile phones, but in regards to the average person accessing Mindfulness with a mobile phone, it's a very low proportion of folks that can do it. There was a very interesting study I came across showing how shallow and superficial peoples concentration was when using a mobile phone, but I haven't included it as it was very dry and technical in its writing. This is primarily due to our conditioning of using it in short, quick bursts and mainly for social needs, so that is the mindset induced as we whip it out of our pocket.
Now, is it possible to access Mindful states of observation when using a mobile phone? Yes, theoretically. In practice though, it takes more concentration again than picking up a camera not to be put into the normal state of mobile phone operation.
I'll have to see if I can incorporate an alternative or option for those that want to use a mobile phone though, for each of the exercises or themes. I'm not sue that there may be an alternative when it involves using an aperture though. For everything else of a technical nature you can get an app to allow full control of your phones camera. Thanks for pointing out the exclusionary process there. I think I will mention the need to really apply and focus ones self to access Mindfulness and concentration/observation when using a mobile phone early on too, probably through an example of how the photography groups evolved into using cameras.
I have added in an initial tabletop observational exercise in chapter one, as per Kens suggestion above and it has a few images.
This excerpt is the founding material for further investigation and it was created as a response to quite a few requests from the participants for more information on Mindfulness, not necessarily just on how it applies to photography. They just wanted some handouts to be able to read and refer to and I took it further.
Now, it's become more of a free sample from the book.
The remaining two hundred odd pages is all pictures, with supporting text and commentaries, so it's not like the book is lacking in images! There was a deliberate choice I made to not be too visually heavy in the first chapters that cover the foundation stuff, but I'll see if I can add a few more images in there.
I will share one of my own explorations of something through twenty images, to show that they don't have to all be perfect specimens. That the end goal is actually the depth of investigation and observation the participant experiences.
Thanks again, Molly. It was truly appreciated and has provided me with a lot more to mull over.
😎
