and the winner is

I just asked Sølve to say a number between 1 and 62 (which is the total number of comments on the giveaway), and he said 61. So, the winner of the 30 days of winter book giveaway is Nadja's comment. This is what she enjoys most about winter:

1.det fineste med vinteren er fyr i peisen, musikk i ørene og rødvin i glasset. mens man ser ut vinduet på snøen som faller ned.
2. kjenne solen i ansiktet på en klar og kaldt vinter dag, mens man puster inn frisk luft og beveger seg gjennom livet.

Which means: 1. The best thing about winter is a lit fire place, music in my ears and red wine in my glass whilst looking out the window and seeing snow falling outside. 2. to feel the sun on my face on a cold, crisp day, whilst breathing fresh air and moving through life.

Congratulations Nadja!

Please email me with your address.

giveaway

Since March is the first month of spring in my part of the world, I was planning to wait with this giveaway until winter starts again. But since spring is put on hold while it's snowing - again - I decided to do this giveaway now after all.


Here is some background information about my newest book, 30 days of winter, that you can win:

In December 2010 I received a package from Mallorca, Spain. It was a Christmas card and a film from my friend Lorena Arance, whom I’ve met online through Flickr and blogging. We share a passion for shooting film and Lorena sent me one of her favorites – a German film called Müller 200. In return I decided to do a special project of everyday life journaling, which I know Lorena adores.

I loaded this Müller 200 iso film in my Minolta SRT 101 camera on December 29 and took one photo every day until the film was finished. Each day I made a note of what I had photographed and wrote a few words about that day. The result is a record of 30 days of winter on the west coast of Norway.

The book is 36 pages, square format, soft cover. It is available here in my Blurb bookstore. You can view a little preview here (+ below) and I have uploaded a few of the photos from the book to this set on Flickr.

30 days of winter by Astrid Hagen Mykletun | Make Your Own Book

To participate in this giveaway I want you to answer this question:

What do you enjoy most about winter?

A winner will be picked at random on Friday March 18 ca 8 pm CET+1.

new Blurb book: 30 days of winter

Finally, here is the project I mentioned before; a new Blurb photo book called 30 days of winter.

In December 2010 I received a package from Mallorca, Spain. It was a Christmas card and a film from my friend Lorena Arance, whom I’ve met online through Flickr and blogging. We share a passion for shooting film and Lorena sent me one of her favorites – a German film called Müller 200. In return I decided to do a special project of everyday life journaling, which I know Lorena adores.

I loaded this Müller 200 iso film in my Minolta SRT 101 camera on December 29 and took one photo every day until the film was finished. Each day I made a note of what I had photographed and wrote a few words about that day. The result is a record of 30 days of winter on the west coast of Norway.

The book is 36 pages, square format, soft cover. It is available here in my Blurb bookstore. You can view a little preview here and I have uploaded a few of the photos from the book to this set on Flickr.

Edit: Lorena wrote a very sweet post about this project.

book making tips

I recently had a clear out of my Hotmail inbox and I found a blog comment that I had saved. It is a comment from Ingvild on this post. She says she likes the way I put my photos together and she asks if I would mind sharing a few tips on how I choose photos for my Blurb books.

Click on the image to view it bigger.

So far I have made 26 books using the self-publish service Blurb. Most of my books are filled with memories of everyday life and special occasions, like our wedding, a trip to Paris with our friends, the celebration of my in-laws' 40th wedding anniversary, hiking with my parents and girlfriends' hen parties. (You can see glimpses of a few of these books here.)

Note: These tips are from a happy photo book making amateur; I'm sure a book making professional will give you different tips. Blurb has some tutorials you can watch (I haven't seen any of them).

Choose a theme
Making a book starts with choosing a theme or a concept for your book. For example The Dinner Project, Look Down or 2010: from summer to winter, where the examples below are from.

Book size
Now you have to choose the right size for your book. For small books (up to 80 pages) I like the square format, and for bigger books (up to 200-250 pages) I prefer the standard landscape format.

Organize your archives
The next big job is to sort through your photo archives to find the photos you want to include in your book. If your archives are a mess, this will be a time consuming job... As I've mentioned before I'm an organized girl, so this job is rather easy for me.

Choose photos and layouts
The content in most of the books in the photo above are sorted chronologically, which in my opinion makes the whole book making process easier. (It's not the right way to do it for all books. Neither of my public books, except The Dinner Project and Everyday Stories, are chronologically organized.) But then comes the hard part; how to choose photos and page layouts. I use the layout templates provided in Blurb BookSmart and I'm happy with that. I like a clean and simple layout; the photos are the main focus.

I choose layouts according to the photos I want to display on each spread, and I very often choose photos for each spread according to colors and light.

Did that make any sense to you?

I think this is hard to explain, as this process has become kind of natural to me. So I'm not sure I will be able to explain this in an understandable way. Hopefully the examples below will be a bit helpful.



Matching colors. I like these shots a lot, so I chose to have them big. Another example. And another one. Even another one.


Matching colors and light. These are taken with the same kind of film. Another example. And another one.


A batch of photos taken the same day. I like how they tell a story of the day when grouped together like this. Another example.


This is a layout I use a lot in my annual everyday life books. The size of the photos are not too small. These photos are from within the same month. I think they work pretty well together like this when it comes to light and colors. Another example. And another one.


This is also a layout I use a lot. Big is sometimes better. When choosing the full bleed layout (to the left) make sure there are no important details where the two pages meet. Another example.


Instead of full bleed I often choose this layout, with the white border around the image. That way the whole image is "safe", if you understand what I mean. Another example. And another one.


As I said; big is sometimes better. Another example. And another one.


Sometimes a group of photos are better. When choosing layouts with several photos on one page, I try to keep the balance by having a simple layout on the other page - ideally just one medium size photo.


These examples are from my newest everyday life book; 2010: from summer to winter. It is a standard landscape book with 250 pages. You can see some more glimpses in this set on Flickr.

For some reason I try to limit myself to 200 pages for these books. In 2009 that resulted in 3 books á 200 pages (one of them was mainly our honeymoon), and last year I made one with 200 pages + this last one with 250 pages. I'm however not yet done with 2010; I plan to make a book from our New York trip. I love having my photos in books like this instead of just on the computer.

So, any questions on making Blurb books? I will try to answer the best I can, but you might want to check out Blurb.com too.

The Dinner Project book

As most of you probably know by now, in 2010 I wrote down what we had for dinner every day, and every Sunday I posted the week’s menu here on Hei Astrid. I also photographed at least one dinner each week. And then I made this Blurb book.

The Dinner Project is a 160 pages standard landscape book filled with 365 days of dinners and 208 photos. It is available in both hardcover imagewrap and softcover. You can find the book in my Blurb bookstore here.

You can see more glimpses from the book in this set on Flickr and in the preview on Blurb. FYI: I have decided not to show the full book preview on Blurb this time (you can however see the full book preview of my other six books).

Curious about the dinner project? Click the label "the dinner project" to see all the posts.

PS: The giveaway will be announced soon.

fresh from the printer

The Dinner Project books arrived today and I'm really excited about it. If I might say this myself; they look really great! I will of course show you glimpses of the book soon, and it will also soon be available for purchase in my Blurb bookstore. And as I mentioned a little while ago, I'm planning a giveaway with one of these books.

the dinner project: book update

Canon EOS 500N, Fuji Velvia 100

365 days of dinners, 208 photos, 160 pages; The Dinner Project book has just been sent off to the Blurb printer. I have ordered two copies and I plan to give away one of them to a lucky Hei Astrid reader. By the way, the photo above is on the front page of the book.

giveaway

Minolta SRT 303, Fuji Superia X-tra 800

As I mentioned on Sunday, I think it's time for a new giveaway in this space. The last one was fun! At least for me, and for Ingvild, I guess ;-)

I did sort of plan to make and launch a new Blurb book before Christmas, but no. I promise to launch one early next year though. Until then I will give away my bestselling book, filled with lots of my favorite film shots, Øyeblikk*. In return I want questions and answers.

So, to participate in this giveaway you need to do two things:

1) Inspired by Famapa I want you to ask me a question. Like Famapa said; ask me anything and I will do my best to answer honestly.

2) Inspired by the Reisæter family I want you to answer my question; who are you? I really appreciate all of you ca 600 daily visitors, and I would love to get to know you a little more. Where are you from? How old are you? What do you do for a living? What are you passions?

The winner of this giveaway will be chosen at random and announced on Christmas Eve, December 24, ca noon Norway time.


*Øyeblikk is a 80 pages book with premium paper lustre finish, hardcover imagewrap. The lustre finish is rather new at Blurb (matte finish has been the only option for premium paper before), and it's the first time I've ordered it. I can't decide which only I prefer; both finishes are beautiful.

PS: Blurb has a Holiday Special Offer: Free Flat Rate Shipping until December 10. More details here. Hurry up and make/order your book by then, or take a look in my Blurb bookstore to see if you can find any possible Christmas presents there.

2010: from winter to spring

I continue my tradition of making Blurb books of my everyday life photos. There are more glimpses of this 236 pages book in this set on Flickr.

There are no new books in my Blurb bookstore since Light, but I'm pretty sure I'll update in a few months.

Have you made any photo books lately?