[alt-photo] Re: Gum over platinum article?

[Diana Bloomfield]

Chris, I don't blame you at all for not allowing the teacher to copy a couple of chapters from your book to use them in a class.  Students have to buy books all the time; that teacher should have made your book required, especially if he/she was going to use several chapters.  

On the other hand, if the teacher was a practitioner him/herself, then you can't really prevent that teacher-- who may have simply learned from your book, or anyone else's book-- from using that gained knowledge to pass along to umpteen students-- without ever forcing them to buy a book.  So an author could essentially sell one book to one person, but that person passes along the information her or she has gleaned from that one little purchase-- without ever making a copy of anything-- just passing along information that's now cemented in his/her brain.  But isn't that, in part, how knowledge gets passed along through generations?

I read this essay in a magazine, written about 10 or so years ago-- not a 'how-to' anything-- but just a really interesting, thoughtful, and beautifully written piece about photography in general-- and, for years, I made copies of that essay and gave it out to every student I taught.  I did speak with the author about doing so, and he just said that as long as I wasn't charging for it, he was fine with that.  If I was charging for it, he wanted a cut of whatever I was making.  Of course, I wasn't charging anybody anything.  And the magazine didn't really care; their feeling was that it introduced more people to their magazine who might otherwise not have known about them.  And, honestly, I think the author was flattered.  Distributing that article also introduced people to him and his writing-- people who otherwise might not have known about him.  In the long run, I suspect the magazine gained some subscriptions and notice, and the author, too, got a little more recognition than he might have otherwise.  

But, yes, there aren't too many processes (how-to detail) that you can't find-- somewhere, anywhere-- for free.  I think I probably have every book under the sun, but my best information about gum came from a gum-over platinum workshop with Kerik-- which was informative, oh so thorough, and a ton of fun-- as well as all the good information from Chris and Katharine and a few others, here on this List (all generously given for free, if I'm not mistaken!)-- And, of course-- in my opinion, Judy's PF Journals have to be the best resource out there-- for everything alt.  If I had to get rid of all my books on alt processes, and could keep only one-- I'd definitely save that stack of PF Journals and let everything else go.

By the way, I was told once by a fairly well-known fiction writer-- that nobody makes money on writing a book, unless somebody decides to make a movie from it.  ;)

Oh-- and I love the term, "pearl-clutching," Keith.  Never heard that before, but I'm definitely stealing it. ;)

~Diana
On Aug 10, 2011, at 11:37 AM, Christina Anderson wrote:

> Dear All,
> I'm conflicted over this discussion and I'll tell you why.
> 
> First of all, Denny, there are free articles all over the web. I have a gum article on Malin's website alternativephotography.com (the best alt resource ever, that and unblinkingeye), Sam Wang has a gum article on Unblinkingeye, Sarah Van Keuren just made her alt manual available for free on alternativephotography.com as well. So easy to get free stuff.
> 
> Two, I wrote a chromoskedasic article for Photo Technique magazine, and as far as I am concerned I'd love them to make it free and available on the web. But they haven't done so that I am aware of, even though I have asked. **I** won't pdf my own article and send it out because I am afraid of copyright violation! But that is because Photo Technique still can make money off of it. Once an author gets paid for an article, he/she doesn't get any further remuneration, and it is no sweat off the author's back if his/her article is read and passed around because it is essentially more press. If you're going to be in a magazine, you're sharing with the world so why not one more? But that is my opinion, not necessarily shared by the copyright police.
> 
> Three, ILL easily scans magazine articles and has them available on a website for a period of time and then it comes down, during which time anyone can easily "print to pdf" and save it on their computer.
> 
> Fourth, I had a teacher ask me if he could copy a couple chapters out of my book and use them in his experimental class and I said no way. If someone is going to teach out of my manuals they can buy the darn book. Can I stop that from happening? NO. And mind you, it's not like you get rich on book sales--somewhere in the neighborhood of $5-8 per book if one is lucky by the time everyone takes their cut (and btw, my books are $34 + shipping, not the prices they show up on Amazon for). And this doesn't cover travel to special collections, editing fees, etc. So it is not a question of money grubbing but of fairness. 
> 
> So there are my conflicting emotions, no black and white here...
> 
> Fifth, thanks, Keith, for recommending my Alt Processed Condensed book, but a disclaimer here: I have just finished (gasp) submitting my tenure case, all 500+ pages of it ( a wild last 6 years), and essentially bought out a one-course release this semester to lessen my teaching load so I could revise my two books and then work on the gum book. First the Experimental, then the Alt, then the gum book. I am going to bite the bullet and intersperse hundreds of images throughout the texts and majorly rewrite. In order to do so, over the last two years I had to learn InDesign, no small feat. I feel the gum chapter in the Alt book is mediocre now, honestly, but it was the best I did at the time. SO, I personally would wait, unless you have money to burn. 
> 
> It is a scary time to self-publish, though, given the economic climate.
> 
> OK, now to keep it on topic, I agree with Keith. What is so complex about a layer of gum over platinum? I teach gum and then an assignment where they have to do a combotype of either gum over pd or gum over cyano or whatever they come up with (over ink jet, for instance) and they "just do it." All of these processes only take one thing to get good at them: doing them. But if you have never done gum before, then that is different, and it just takes learning the gum process, and with the web freebees you can certainly get where you want to go very easily. 
> 
> I'm not a person who believes there are "secrets" in these things, and expertise usually is the result of doing a thousand prints, as I have always said. What did some guy determine, in Outliers, that it took 10,000 hours to be an expert? Well, to get there, that first hour is going to be pretty scary but by hour 50 you'll be good to go :) 
> Chris
> 
> Christina Z. Anderson
> christinaZanderson.com
>