Eleven months to get 132 photographs printed correctly

Four years of harbours

Hana Lindqvist photographed working harbours from Astoria to Prince Rupert for four years — ice houses, gutting tables, the specific quality of light at three in the morning when the boats go out. She arrived with roughly nine hundred images and no idea how to reduce them to a book.

Sequencing before printing

The first work was editorial rather than technical. A picture editor worked with her over six weeks to cut nine hundred images to 132 and, more importantly, to sequence them. Photography books are read in order whether or not the photographer intends them to be, and the sequence carries the argument.

Hana describes losing forty images she loved. She also says the book would have been worse with them in it.

Where the eleven months went

Production was where the project became difficult. The images depend on deep blacks and narrow tonal separation in low light, which is exactly the region where print and screen diverge most.

The first physical proof came back with the blacks reading as dark grey and the tonal separation in the shadows collapsed. On screen it had looked correct. This is why we do not approve illustrated books from a screen.

Three proof rounds followed. The second improved the blacks but introduced a slight warm cast in the ice-house sequence. The third, on a different coated stock at a heavier weight, held both. Hana signed off on a Tuesday afternoon after comparing the proof against her own reference prints under daylight.

Binding and format

The book is lay-flat bound, which costs more and matters here: a double-page spread with a photograph across the gutter is ruined by a binding that will not open. At 10 × 11 inches on 150gsm coated stock the finished book is heavy, which affected shipping costs and had to be priced in deliberately.

What she says now

Hana has become, by her own account, tediously interested in paper. She is currently producing a cookbook on uncoated stock, which behaves entirely differently, and reports enjoying the contrast.