It has been a trip this book lark. This is the tenth year of Photo CPL Media being in existence. It started in 2008 to get the PhotoCPL book out. Which means that book is old, in fact this is it's release month, so that actually is a birthday.
It has been said before, it was a hail Mary of a project. The goal was to just get it out there, so it was done. If it went down in a ball of flames and there ended up being a garage full of unsold books, so be it. It cost over 30K, self funded, it was a huge gamble at the time.
The PhotoCPL book did well. It got good reviews and the sales followed. I'm grateful to everyone that helped me and those that stoked out on the book.
It ended up being the launching pad for the 7 titles that have followed. As well as the projects like postcards and print sets. It's kind of gnarly to realise I'm been putting ink on paper for 25 years. You'd think I'd know what I'm doing by now, wish I did!
I'd hope all the books have their merits, but there are personal favourites. Of course there are parts of each project I'm unhappy with. That seemed like a good idea but didn't translate well. I'll give you an example; the subtitle of PhotoCPL is New Zealand Surfing Photography 1991- 2008. Spot the blunder? By capping the date period i.e. having 2008 on there, it instantly dated the book. It just should have been 1991- onwards. We even toyed with having an arrow after the 1991 or a fast forward sign.
I'll let you in on another one; in the back of Beached As Vol 1 there's a photographic notes page. Well, I'd now never ever shoot to the methodology explained in there- it's wrong. As this is typed out the mistakes come flooding back- they haunt.
A favourite project is The Big Little Beach Book. The images were shot on film cameras, digital cameras, water-housings and different formats. I got to campervan from Cape Reinga to the Bluff [not in one go]. The mistakes made in Beached As 1 and 2 were addressed, the formula was refined. These are some of my favourite images from The Big Little Beach Book;
Nins Bin, Kaikoura. Shot on a Canon 5Dmkiii with a 10 stop ND filter and grad to create cloud blur
Punakaiki Rocks, West Coast. Shot on Velvia film with the Fotoman 617 Panoramic camera
Matauri Bay split view. Shot using a Canon 5Dmkiv with a fisheye lens in a waterhousing...kind of important for the camera that waterhousing bit
Little Bay Tractors, Coromandel. Shot on Kodak T-max 100 film with the Fuji GSX690 camera. Kiwiana as!
Waimarama Beach...well motor camp, which has sadly since been closed to the public. Shot on Kodak Extar 100 film with the Fotoman 617 Panoramic camera
Whitebait stations at Haast. Shot on a Canon 5Dmkiii with a Zeiss 50mm lens
Maybe a surprise choice, but I love the long shadows and that there's so many interactions happening. Mission Bay, Auckland on a typical summer mid week evening. Shot on a Canon 5Dmkiv with a 16-35mm L lens.
In June The Big Little Beach Book sold out. That is pretty good, sold through in 18 months. The default is still 'Well there's not a pile of cartons sitting in the shed- so that worked!' It was going to be left there. Insert dad joke here- y'know, like the end of that chapter, book closed.
ANYWAY! The bloody retailers kept ordering the thing. So there was a yeah, nah bro... which quickly got flipped into a 'hold on, people still want this book huh?'
Next week the reprint of The Big Little Beach Book arrives. It arrives to solid orders. So once again there is a huge amount of gratitude to the support the retailers give and youse fullas who like the stuff made under the Photo CPL Media banner. Thank You, like it says at the start, it has sure been a trip so far.
From The Gift Shop
All Photo CPL Media product is printed with soy based inks [no toxic petros] The printers are FSC, ISO 9001 and 14001 environmental certified. And The Big Little Beach Notecards are most certainly a product of that. Instead of doing a few images from the book, there are 20 different images used, and there's a couple of extra envelopes chucked in for good measure.
Check them out and buy HERE