Sometimes, you just have to declare that a book is dead. Sometimes, somebody has to be the grown up, and make the decision that nobody’s going to buy this book, nobody wants it, it has no resale value, and it’s time to return to that great paper pulp machine in the sky.

Intact books cause problems in the recycle stream. The glue holding the pages together is the problem.

The picture shows the remains of a book that was given to owners of brand new Porsches. Perhaps it was given to dealers. It had pretty photography, but except for its value as a record of that marketing campaign, the book itself had no resale value.

I cut the covers off, then tore the individual folios of pages away from the glue holding them together. The pages went in a box of mixed paper recycling. I don’t know if I can recycle this cover as cardboard as well.

I am more clear about making a decision to euthanize one of my pets then I am about destroying books and sending them into the recycle stream. I need to shift that around. It must be come easier to let go of books. Somebody has to make the decision, and they’re better off in the mixed paper recycling, than they are in the main landfill.

Donating unsellable books to the library sale or thrift shops is not helpful; they simply have to make the decision to kill the book and then cart it to the dump, and they have to pay for waste pickup.

Not all books are as easy to take apart. Paper backs don’t let go of their glue easily. I’m not sure that I’m going to be able to take a razor knife to as many dead and dying paper backs as are stashed around this house. If you know of an easy way to separate paperbacks from their glued spine, please let me know.

February 9, 2017 Update

Found Novel Living, by Lisa Occhipinti, at the library this week.

About collecting, displaying, and making crafts from books. Her display suggestions will not work for me; I don’t have any wall space or horizontal space that needs attention or embellishment. I have put “make a slipcase” on the project list for my collection of aging John MacDonald books that have come into my life from the Habitat Restore. They’re hard to find.

Save

Oh Lord, I loved this book. Full disclosure: lifetime INFP; which I’ve known since 1987. Happy with it; no plans to change or “develop the other half of myself.” (A psychologist friend tells me Jung intended the system to help you know what you needed to work on. After reading Quiet, the thought flashed across my mind: Jung’s dead. Maybe he would have changed his thinking about needing to work on my weak side if he’d lived long enough.)

I was encouraged to open a bio of Dale Carnegie after reading Quiet, and I think Cain does him a bit of a disservice. Yes, he’s the key to the cult of personality. OTOH, he’s also the reason we learned how to teach public speaking in a way that worked. I’m a fluent and skilled public speaker as a result of that course. Carnegie’s system works. There’s no contradiction between introversion and acquisition of a skill like public speaking.

Funny, but while I’ll defend Dale, I loved the rip on Harvard Business School.

A few other quibbles from a note I made while reading:
>the habit of referring to content addressed in future chapters quickly became irritating.
>In the Collaboration / Creativity chapter, Cain dismisses those musicians training to be music teachers at the “elite Music Academy in West Berlin” as “the worst group.” Huh? Perhaps these people are the least skilled at musical performance. But by the time you’ve been accepted into the eMAinWB, you’re hardly the “worst” in any musical comparison. p. 80, my copy) Sloppy choice of words.

I think I will read Quiet again, and that is a rare behavior for me. I was encouraged by the chapter on creativity as a solo experience, having just struggled through Robinson’s Out of Our Minds, which says creative people love collaboration. I couldn’t finish that book. My creativity is a solo thing. I am encouraged to be reminded of “remote” and highly successful introverts; if “remote” and “introverted” aren’t redundant (they are at least side-by-side).

I can’t find more to say that the other reviewers haven’t already covered. A large % of the highly ranked reviews have been written by people who review a lot of books.

Unfortunately, no designer credit is given in the pre-release copy of this book. It is a joy to hold and read the paper edition.

Professional product photography is a wonderful resource. If you can afford to have a professional photographer take images of your products, services, and events, use them. (Make sure you have have permission to use those images on Pinterest, according to your contract with the photographer).

However, you can spend a lot of money on good product photography, and Pinterest is hungry for more images than many smaller businesses can afford.

You can improve the photos you take.  This post talks about how to train your brain to think about images differently; plenty of pins point you to information about the technical elements of improving your images through camera settings and lightroom processing.

Crop!

When in doubt, crop your image! Cut out as much of the background as possible and get in close to what matters to the pin.

If your photo processing software offers a 3×3 grid during the cropping process, get one of the intersections of the grid close to the center of interest in the image.

Real world lesson: TV close-ups of a character (Law and Order pre-commercial fade-out) ALWAYS show the character’s face on one side or the other of the screen, NEVER in the middle.)

Educate Your Eye

Before you can create better images, it’s helpful to be able to recognize better images. As you read trade magazines, end-user retail advertising, or any other source of images including Pinterest, notice which images catch your eye. Tear out pages from magazines and keep them in a notebook or file folder. Pin interesting pin images to secret boards if you don’t want to do your learning in public.

From time to time, look over your collection and let it talk to you. You may find that the images group themselves into categories, by distance from object; time of day, color scheme.

Ask yourself:

• Where is the camera?
• Where is the light source?
• Is there more than one light source?
• What time of day is it?
• What’s in the background and how did the photographer make the background look that way?*

*It’s possible to blur a background by changing the apeture on your camera; it’s easier to make sure the background is as simple and plain as it can be (or at least, interesting and deliberately selected) before you take the picture.

When you’re ready to create your own images, take this information with you and your camera.  Chances are, simply thinking about how an image you like was created will help you create images that you like a lot more.

Books

The board below shows pins about books and other sources of information about improving your photography. I focus on shifting your point of view and general artistic understanding rather than the technical information about how to use software.

Photograph Daily

See Everyday:  A Year Long Photo Diary, by Byron Wolfe.  Anohter book that has the same effect on me are Speck:  A Curious Collection of Uncommon Things, by Peter Buchanan-Smith.

Wolfe is a photography teacher who set himself the assignment to make one good image every day.  Lisa Creed did the same thing with her paintings.  Julia Cameron teaches this about writing daily in The Artists Way.

Carry your camera / smart phone everywhere.  Allow / force yourself to stop and take photographs whenever something catches your eye.  Photographing the same thing every time you pass it will have much the same outcome, if that is easier to do.  (I have a series of the nuclear power plant plume; another of a highway intersection construction project in process.)

If you’ve ever watched a professional photographer work, you may have noticed that he or she took HUNDREDS of photos in order to get the 20 that appeared in your wedding album, or the three that were used in the magazine article.

The point of these exercises is to help you let go of the idea of “one good image” and move into an understanding of “lots of images will lead to one good one.”

Jim Krause’s Index Series

Jim Krause’s Index Series

I love all of Jim Krause’s books.  People doing their own product photography should buy the Photo Idea Index (bright green plastic cover in the picture on the site). The chapters in this book take you through 350 ways of looking at the world (and products!) around you and taking pictures that will make people stop when they see them on the pin flow.

If your business is more specific and you KNOW you only need landscapes, or people, or products, you might want to look at one of Krause’s focused idea books.

If you do nothing but set yourself the exercise of duplicating each of his images with your landscape and/or products, you’ll have 14 boards full of images that work. Add your paid professional shots in with your own images, and your business account will look as good as any big business.

Caveat: I have not been able to duplicate professional interior design photography worth a hoot.  The pros use lights; more lights than you can image.  Using the homeowner’s in-home lighting is NOT enough.  If you pin in the interior design trades, pay for professional portfolio images.  Focus your own photography on close-ups and products, rather than finished installations.

Pins about Pinterest Photography

This is a board where I collect pins about how to create better images for Pinterest; not pins about photography in general.
(Board keeps disappearing, and I’ve submitted a help ticket into Pinterest. Stay tuned.)