John Hooton

I am thinking of putting together a book showing the best of our Urban Wildlife Group in time for Christmas.

The people I will use to publish the book would be Blurb.com who have software that allows one to design a very professional looking book including a dust jacket with inner flaps. Their pages also allow for text so one can make anything from a coffee table extravaganza to a recipe book.

In order to do this, I would invite members to submit work that they consider worthy and I would also invite members whose work I admire who may have missed these notifications.

For work submitted, I propose using a ‘Challenge’. It would be called the ‘Book Challenge’ and will allow you to submit one photograph of your best work. This would not be a challenge in the true sense, but would be a place to initially start gathering work for consideration. Other work would have to be submitted by email if you think it is worthy.

All published photographers would have a full credit so we also need to know your real name, not your nickname!

All those submitting work whether it be by invite or via the challenge, would also have to send me their images by email. Images must be of the highest quality and I would recommend sending full size images where possible. An accompanying text must also be sent with the submission. Basically this should say what the creature is and where it was photographed. Locations must not be vague, we will have a global audience as usual so ‘my back yard’ will not do, it tells us nothing. ‘My back yard, Tuscon, Texas, USA is better.

The text is very important. One or two condensed but informative paragraphs are ideal telling what we are looking at, where it was photographed and how. Any interesting information about the species may also help, but please use your own words; don’t just ‘lift’ your text from Wikipedia or the like.

Urban Wildlife means precisely that. It means the picture must be taken within the confines of a city or town. If it is two miles out from the city perched on a pole or crossing the road it is no longer ‘urban’. I really would like to stick to the strict confines of our group so please only submit pictures that were NOT taken out in the country or wild coast. A park within the city is fine, a park outside the city is not.

So to sum up…

1. Your very best work. Jpeg Images only.
2. Well written and informative accompanying text.
3. Send you full size image and text (use Notepad to create a .txt file) to info@johnhootonphotography.com
4, Include the URL of your picture so that I have a quick reference in Urban Wildlife c/o RedBubble.

Although Christmas might sound quite a long way away, I have got to select, edit and compile the book by about mid November at the latest, so you can start submitting work straight away. I will limit the works to up to four per person. I think October 31st will be about the last date for submissions.

I cannot guarantee that your work will appear in the book, it will be a compilation of the best of the best so there will be a limit on the number of pictures we can publish, however, I encourage you to submit your best work, and will very much welcome your effort whether it is published or not.

I will probably plan the book in chapters, so we might have Birds, Insects, Butterflies, Wildlife, Mammals, Reptiles. I will probably skip flowers. We don’t have enough of them and there are stacks of books on flowers that are a subject on their own..

Bear in mind what our group is about. Start digging through your pictures and let’s create a book that we can be really proud of.

By the way, books sell for a profit on Blurb and if by some miracle we happen to create a best seller, then profits would be divided up amongst the photographers on a picture by picture basis. The coffers would be reviewed every quarter.

Let me know what you think by commenting, and I will attempt to answer any questions and reply here.

John