Well, for my book, actually. 
Blurb’s 2010 Photography Book Now competition is now closed, but the fun is just starting. People’s Choice Award voting is OPEN now through August 20th.
Here’s your opportunity to have your voice heard!
Please help a girl out and cast your vote for my book, Child’s Play.
I’d be eternally grateful. 
If you’ve all been wondering what I’ve been up to (and why I’ve been a bit behind in posting and commenting), well it’s because I’ve been feverishly working on a photobook based upon the Playground Series images!
I self-published the book today just in time to enter it into the Blurb 2010 Photography Book Now contest – so exciting!
A preview of the entire book can be found below. If the text is too small to read, even in full screen viewing mode, you can zoom your browser (for example, in Internet Explorer, the zoom control is located in the lower righthand corner). You can also add your comments on the Blurb website. Not sure if that will influence the judges or not but it can’t hurt, right?
I must say that putting together a professional-looking book is much harder than you’d expect and I now have newfound respect for editors! I cannot tell you how many times I thought the book was ‘done’ only to upload it and discover yet another typo or layout error. Here is one time where my eye for the small details came in handy!
Many thanks to those who helped to review some draft versions – your feedback was much appreciated! Quite a few things have changed since the versions you reviewed, so go ahead and give it another looksee. I’m very proud to have followed this project through and can’t wait to see it in print!
I totally forgot I photographed some signage for the park series! What a find on this crazy weather day. (So far we’ve had sun, showers, more sun, clouds, rain, HAIL (!), more rain and now it is sunny but very windy and chilly - geesh!).
“Grate Sign” (Park Dept Sign) Playground Series (#20) Nikon D300, 62mm, F/4.8, 1/320s, +0.3EV, ISO 200, ‘Old West’ Toning Action
Anyways, I digress… 
“Hours of Play” (Park Hours Sign) Playground Series (#21), Nikon D300, 65mm, F/5, 1/640s, ISO 200, ‘Old West’ Toning Action
I really didn’t think much of it at the time when I shot these – it was merely a ‘while I’m here’ sort of thing. Now, I’m so glad I did as I think they will help to paint a complete picture of the childhood playground experience!
Went to the playground today to see what else I could capture for the Playground Series and lo and behold, someone appears to be looking out for me ‘cuz right there sitting in the grass under one of the basketball hoops is THE saddest looking ball simply begging to be photographed!
“Dead Ball” (Basketball with Hoop Shadow) Playground Series (#19), Nikon D300, 46mm, F.6.3, 1/640s, +0.7EV, ISO 200, ‘Old West’ Toning Action
Now really – how does one pass that up?
I liked what was happening with the lines and the hoop’s shadow so I maneuvered the ball from the grass over to the court and placed a few strategic pieces of mulch underneath it to get the positioning just right.
Game, anyone?
