«A Month 6 Artists and a Book»
SoFoBoMo completed today. Its done!

The intent was to photograph 6 artists [Saidul Haque Juise, Fareha Zeba, Smita Srivastava, Ujwala Prabhu, Rokeya Sultana,  Jamal Ahmed] at work, with the least amount of «set-up». Some people are less conscious of the camera than others, so I had to use a different approach for each. I tried to capture the persona and essence of the personality rather than make pretty photos. I hope that I was able to convey this and some of the intimacy that develops between photographer and «photographee!».

The finishing touches to the text assisted by Jyoti today. Many thanks! Thanks to both Jyoti and Ujwala who supported me from day-one, gave suggestions and assisted in the design. Ujwala, sorry for making your mailbox overflow with those 100's [or was it 1000's?] of emails! 

1. A downloadable PDF [around 18MB] is online → SoFoBoMo - «A Month 6 Artists and a Book» [It might be quicker to right-click this link and save the file to your PC for offline viewing].
   The suggested viewing settings in Adobe Acrobat are:
   View->Page Display->Two Up.
   View->Page Display->Show Cover Page During Two-up.
   Alternatively, set the viewing option in Acrobat to «Full Screen» for a full page by page slide show.
2. View the book online at → ISSUU [Requires FLASH].
3. View it at → SCRIBD

Preview the book:

Having subscribed to Paul Butzi's RSS feed and reading his daily postings for months now, and continually re-reading the posts on SoFoBoMo which started back on 18th Jan - I finally accepted that I actually did want to to participate, share, learn and hopefully create [publish?] a photo book. Some other known participants are listed here and here.

So, what is SoFoBoMo all about anyway? Here is a direct quote from Paul Butzi's page:

«Why is it called SoFoBoMo and not NaSoPhoBoMo?

It's called SoFoBoMo because it's fun to say, and because it's easier to type than NaSoPhoBoMo. I dropped the Na part because it's clear at the outset that it's involving photographers from around the world, and thus it really ought to be InSoFoBoMo, but again that's just too much. SoFoBoMo is just right.

When is Solo Photo Book Month?

Because we're just getting started, we're doing a fuzzy month. You should pick a 31 day period that starts no earlier than April 1, 2008, and ends no later than May 31, 2008. In other words, if you start on April 1, your month ends on May 1. If you start on April 15, your month ends on May 15. Having everyone do it exactly at the same time would be nice, because it would allow for maximum sense of camaraderie, but everyone has different schedules and this fuzzy month start/finish plan buys some of that without the inflexibility.

How many photos do I need for the book?

35 - large enough that it can't be flung together from a single afternoon's photography, short enough to be doable. I understand that for some folks 35 is big number. For the folks who have been running photo-a-day photoblogs, it's child's play. 35 is a reasonable compromise. It's the number of photos in the book «The Gift of the Commonplace», a book of photographs by Ruth Bernhard. If it's long enough for Ruth Bernhard, it's long enough for us. UPDATE: You can have more that 35 photos if you like.
PAUL BUTZI»

You can read the full details here.