Shadows is unique in that it took so little effort and planning.

After many years in the publishing world, where each book took months, sometimes years, to produce, I wondered: "What sort of book could I produce in one day?"¹

The plan was simple. First, pick a theme. Shadows sounded fun. I would photograph objects in our art studio early-morning and late-afternoon, when the shadows would be most dramatic. In the middle of the day I would search for quotes about shadows. The evening would be devoted to designing, laying out and printing the content.

Some of my favorite quotes...

Find beauty not only in the thing itself but in the pattern of the shadows, the light and dark which that thing provides. — Junichiro Tanizaki

To think of shadows is a serious thing. — Victor Hugo

Where there is much light, the shadow is deep. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Look round and round upon this bare bleak plain, and see even here, upon a winter's day, how beautiful the shadows are! Alas! it is the nature of their kind to be so. The loveliest things in life, Tom, are but shadows; and they come and go, and change and fade away, as rapidly as these!" — Charles Dickens

Some of the photographs...

Production notes: Photographs were taken with a Canon PowerShot SD780IS digital camera. Images were converted into grayscale and manipulated in PhotoShop. The book content was layed out using InDesign and printed on a Brother HL-1850 laser printer. The text on the cover of the book was done using a photo-polymer plate that was then printed on a 1913 Golding tabletop platen press. The book was hand-bound. (If you are curious about my bookbinding process go here.)

¹To be completely honest, the text block (body) of the book took one day to create. The case (cover) took additional time because a photo-polymer plate had to be ordered and delivered, and making the case and attaching it to the text block (called casing-in) is a day-long process in iteself.

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