"In the right light, at the right time. Everything is extraordinary." -- Aaron Rose
Copyright Royce Sihilis Photography
COMING SOON
COMING SOON
COMING SOON
In my second year of university, I took a photography class where the final assignment was to design a book showcasing our photography as a whole. With my previous experience creating layouts for my high school's yearbooks, I was given permission to use the Adobe InDesign program while the rest of the class used templates provided through another program. I chose to use the Adobe InDesign CS 6 program because it allowed me to have more creative freedom when designing the layout of each page.
I explored using white space more dominantly in my layouts to essentially let the photos speak for themselves. Accustomed to using less white space in order to fit more photos in the layout, I found it quite difficult initially to let go of my instinct to include as many photos as asthetically possible. However, after designing the first layout, I become increasly comfortable with the idea of "less is more" when it came to my pages.
This was my first book design where I didn't have a team to help finish layouts or to assign certain pages to. Thankfully, adapting to this wasn't hard due to the fact that I worked on every part of the yearbook design including layouts, photos, captions and other text. Organizing the order of pages also came naturally to me since one of my responsibilities as Editor-in-Chief included creating the yearbook ladder (order of pages) two years in a row.
The class was not required to print their book design, only to submit a PDF of their design. I decided to print my book. With that came decisions I'd never been faced with before even after my six years of previous book design experience. As a student editor on several yearbooks, it was always left up to the teacher advisor or the publishing company to decide certain elements like type of paper being used and what kind of cover to use. Printing my own book, I decided to use one of the heavier papers in order to increase picture quality. Printing on heavier paper also helps the color on the pages last longer which appealed to me. The cover was a little more simple to choose because I already knew I wanted a hardcover book. All I had to do from there was decide if I wanted it to be an imagewrap or a dust jacket. I eventually decided to go with the imagewrap.
Life with a Camera
After publishing my first book, "Life with a Camera", I realized that I wanted to create a book that focussed on my passion for hiking. My hiking philosophy has always been that the journey is more important than the destination. When leading hikes for Resident Advisor programming or going on hikes with friends, I noticed that most people on the hike wanted to go as fast as possible to reach the top. However, as an amateur photographer, I know there is a lot of value to be found along the way to the top. This is evident in the type of photos I take when hiking. The insects, birds, plants, and even some of the views I've taken pictures of cannot be found at the top or at the main destination.
I decided to separate this book into three simple sections: the start, middle, and end of the journey. As I was trying to decide which photos to include, there were a number of photos I wanted to include that didn't have anything to do with hiking. At first, I tried ignoring those photos and looking for pictures that better related to hiking specifically. I kept coming back to the non-hiking photos. I realized that my theme for the book might be too specific.
Not everyone is a hiker but everyone goes on different journeys in their lives. There's a journey through high school, post-secondary, jobs, and of course life itself. In the end, I decided to keep the "About the Journey" theme but widen it to include photos that were part of a non-hiking journey. At the beginning of each section, I wrote about my thoughts on that part of a hiking journey as well as a "life" journey.