This is meant mostly for those who love taking photos but also want to do some media studies along with it. This lesson will take you step by step on how to make a coffee table book.
Step 1: Influences - So a coffee table book is often an oversized book that you leave on your coffee table for guests to flick through. They usually have gorgeous pictures around one theme. So you can either look at other coffee table books but it would be just as good to look at other photographers. Print off images and stick them in a book. Make notes about what you like and don't like. Make plans to see if you can replicate some of them.
Step 2: Audience - Write up who you think would like a coffee table book and why they would enjoy the images you will do. What mood or feeling do your audience want to go away with? Go into detail of how you will engage them.
Step 3: Practicalities - Learn how to use different software to edit photos and how to lay them out. Log this process to show what you have learned and what was difficult and how you overcame things along the way.
Step 4: Plan a photoshoot - Depending on your theme your photo shoot can be done in different ways but make sure you note down all the things you need. Who will be there? What equipment will you need? What things do you have to worry about? How will you manage lighting? Write down everything that is going on in your head around your photoshoot.
Step 5: Take some photos - This part is simple but the most fun. Take all the photos you will need. A normal coffee table book will often have almost a 100 photos. For this standard you don't need that many. Technically you could get away with 6 pages of photos but see if you can do more. You can make a coffee table book with other students and each of you can have a section. Keep a log of your work. Every day you take images make a journal entry about what you did and what helped or hindered you. And any other notes like what you are going to do next or whether you completed everything you had planned to do.
Step 6: Photographer Bio - You will need to have a picture of yourself and a bio to go before your photos. If you don't want a picture of yourself then choose an image that represents who you are as a person. The bio should be between 350 and 1000 words. This can be about yourself and it can talk about the influences or your process. Maybe even why you decided to go with this theme.
Step 7: Layout and fonts - Decide what fonts and how you are going to layout your coffee table book. Who will go where which images will be on each page. Will you write up an explanation for each image? They should at least have a title. You can put in where it is or who the subject is. You will also need to decide what the cover will look like. What will you call your coffee table book? Like I said before you can do this as a group but everyone will need to keep a record of the discussions themselves for the standard. You will need to decide on things like the size of the book, how you will print it up and how many pages you will want.
Step 8: First Draft - Make up a page for each of you and the cover. Have a discussion with you and your teacher about what things are working and what changes you want to make. You can even do the whole thing up and see how it feels. This can be a digital copy but I find having a printed one allows you to see different things and is called a proof copy. For the standard I only require a first draft.
Step 9: Make changes - Once you have decided on the last details go and make all the changes. You can hand in a digital copy of your coffee table book for the standard but there is a joy of having it printed up. I'm sure your family will love to have one of your coffee table books for their own homes.
Teacher Notes
This is for the plan and produce a media product and can be done at any level. Since this was originally meant for journalism it is understood that the higher the level the more writing is expected - the standard says an extended feature/section of multi-pages A4 or A3 for a magazine or newspaper. The coffee table is more like a magazine than a newspaper but there needs to have some writing. Level 1 should have at least 350 words, level 2 should have at least 500 words and level 3 should have at least 1000 words as part of their contribution. It is expected that images will dominate the book for the higher levels they should be showing skill in using technology and software.
The planning part is worth 4 credits and the producing is worth 6 credits for a total of 10 credits.
Level 1 - 90993 & 90994
Level 2 - 91252 & 91253
Level 3 - 91494 & 91495
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