IS IT A COMMERCIAL BOOK?

As he publishes some wonderful books and offers workshops to create commercial books, I asked Harvey to comment on Raul's edit from the perspective of a commercial book. He encouraged me to share his comments...

Comments from David Alan Harvey, provided with his permission:

“.... and, of course, i have many more thoughts and so little time to share them.....and remember i am not doing an edit.....to really really critique these pictures i would have to have a light table...off the computer screen and page by page is no way to do it....so my thoughts are sketch book thoughts rather than finely tuned analysis....”

“ok i took a look at some length ......for sure, you guys should go with the 80 edit [for a commercial book], maybe even a few less....the class did an excellent job and it will look much much better with the tighter edit.....otherwise you will have a "vanity" edit that your friends and neighbors and mothers and fathers and sons and daughters and husbands and wives will like ..... but they all love you anyway!!!

group books are always a bit of a problem....i have participated in several from national geographic and magnum over the years and they tend to be a bit unfulfilling because nobody gets exactly what they want....it is just the nature of the beast....and the big question is always.....is it going to be one big photo essay or a collection of individual essays? how will you do it??

ok page by page notes referring to each of the 10 web pages that make up the 80 picture edit....

page one...the silhouette lower left seems like a cliché...you guys have a lot of sophisticated pictures and that one just jumps off that page as "camera club" good rather than "leading edge" good....

pages two and three look fine

page 4....two shots of things hanging off the wall?? pick one

page 5 ....second shot from left....weak

pages 6 and 7 fine

page 8 ...that whole page looks a bit weak compared to the other pages, but especially kid with backpack and skeleton on wall and one to immediate left.

page 9......two blurred musicians?? pick one

page 10.... one of best pages

i know, i know, you want to keep everyone happy.....but what a shame not to have the lance photo essay intact and ben's essay intact.....

but all in all just a wonderful spontaneous set of photographs....i am very proud personally of this class, their energy, good spirit, obvious camaraderie and great work.”