Creating a photobook

As part of a module in 2024 I created a photobook entitled ‘Yn agos ac yn bersonal’ which translates from Welsh to mean ‘Up close and personal’ the reason I chose a Welsh title was because all the imagery I used was of the Welsh coast and it felt right to honour my heritage. With this photobook my main priority was the sequencing.

To start I walked across a few North Walian beaches, and my goal was to capture as many textures as possible. When I had a collection of around 30 images that I was happy with I printed them all out and stuck them on the wall of my university accommodation so I could see them all alongside each other, from here I spent a number of days reordering them, making notes about sizing for example if I wanted some to be a double page spread or others to be smaller. Once I was happy with how I was looking I made my first dummy book.

For my first dummy book I printed my images out on the cheap printers using my notes from the wall and stuck it together with plain paper and sticky tape so I could visually see what it would look like in book form, from this I was able to create many versions of these dummy books both physically and using InDesign. After weeks of testing and peer assessing I was happy to print it and good quality paper and create my final dummy book.

From this process I learned that you don’t have to have one solid idea right from the beginning, sitting with a project and making small changes can be incredibly beneficial in making a solid piece of work.