Maybe it’s common to travel with a group of people to another country and stay in the same resort, condos, or even the same house with them, to plan most meals and activities with them, and take hundreds of pictures with them. But it’s not common to do all of that with 11 other families from your kid’s 5th grade class.
Surrounded by old and new friends and all of our kids ranging in age from six to twelve, we had a glorious time in the tropical wonderlands of Costa Rica. Playa Flamingo to be precise.
Activities were well planned and coordinated. Meals were fun and delicious. Parents took turns being strategically stationed at the main pool, the side pool, the beach, or the recreation room at any given time. The couple brave drivers who rented cars were generous with their accommodations. Not an ounce of energy was wasted judging anyone about anything, instead it was spent surrendering to the sun and waves.
Besides surfing, zip lining, horseback riding, and cruising the waters on a catamaran, we napped as needed, read, swam, drank, laughed, lounged, walked, floated, received massages and relaxed. A couple days were left empty so families could recenter, though our flock of tweens were constantly pulled towards the vortex of their collective magnetism.
At least ten cameras were at the ready at any given time of day. Every major and minor moment was captured whether we were suspend in air, riding raging waters, snuggling ever deeper into damp sand, making tamales, or building intricate sea shell fortresses. Each sunset, rainbow, pretty coffee, wire walking monkey, elaborate meal, sultry flower, and sea shell was photographed. Over a 1,000 images were floating around between all of us just begging to be bound into a book.
Knowing that the whole process would take longer than anticipated, and that I often underestimate my time, I was excited to begin. Several steps, all simple in theory, were in order. First and foremost: collect pictures! Then decide on the final product’s size and shape, organize, cull and curate photos, create an architecture around the events, lay it all out, do a head count, print and proof it, edit and spell check, upload and order. The makings of a good time, and so I began.
Turns out people are BUSY when they are not on vacation. Some folks got photos to me within a week of being home, some a full six months later. Gentle prompting was consistent and through all known means (emails, texts, phone calls, school hallways, going to people’s houses and letting them feed me dinner). I was unwilling to let anyone off the hook, so the delay of production is decidedly on me. Honestly though, I’m glad I held out. The combination of everyone’s perspective rounded out this project in a marvelous way.
Drop Box and Google docs were the go-to file sharing methods. Both work beautifully. DropBox overwrites original photo dates when uploading, which became challenging. I was forced to let go of absolute correctness in chronology of the days we were free to roam separately. It was an exercise in acceptance that did not come without a little gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair.
Filtering for duplicates was its own task, as each of us had WhatsApp pictures mixed in with our camera rolls. Probably the most time consuming activity, and one of my favorites, was simply choosing the best shot of three (or eight) in a series. Looking at each photo for expressions, gestures, and background action excited my neurons. The documentarian/hoarder in me struggled to let the lesser images go because even blurry shots contained beautiful details not found anywhere else. Decision fatigue eventually set in however, and the best photos revealed themselves.
Keeping an even balance of characters throughout the book was important in my mind, so I created a grid of names and photo options (individual shots, groups of two, groups of three, ect.) to keep track of how many times a face appeared. If it sounds tedious, it was. But how else to insure I didn’t over represent my family? Or under represent my family in reaction to the paranoia of over representing them? Too much time was spent on this step probably, but no one can say I played favorites. For the families who didn’t take many pictures, or were on a shorter timeline, I gave more full page coverage. For those of us with kids who managed to be in front of every lens, I allotted a little less solo real estate.
Including several WhatsApp threads added to to the overall feeling of relaxed fun, otherwise dates, days and locations were the only verbiage.
Design time took a total of 80 hours from final photo collection to uploading the finished book file to Blurb. The choice of a heavy, uncoated stock really made the book feel un-photobook like and rather exquisite. Stock choice and removal of the Blurb logo increased the price a little, but the bulk discount more than made up for it.
I sought permission from parents to use pictures of their kids as they lost to the waves during surfing, but otherwise allowed us all the opportunity to feel unselfconscious. A link of the entire book went out to each family before they ordered, but after it was too late to make changes. Eight months after our return, we gathered at Licha’s Cantina for great Austin Mexican food and the books were distributed. As the kids dove in, parents caught up, reconnected, and tossed around ideas for our next adventure.
At the writing of this post, a year has passed since I lay on sands offering a Pacific view and rolled with the waves as they drew me farther into the sea then sent me humbly back to shore; since the air, heavy with humidity, allowed neither the feeling of freshly showered or deeply dirty. The folks I traveled with are in my inner circle and wider tribe, and I, a grateful book designer.