Something happened in a factory in Slovenia at 9:30am this morning …
the first physcial proofs of my first book rolled off a printing press.
by Michael Ryan, fotoVUE
I have to admit to be being overwhelmed and it’s looping back on itself. It’s got nothing to do with all the hard work that everyone has put in, the amount of patience everyone has had with me, it’s just me. I’m not feeling the excitement that everyone else is. I’m very pleased that others are so pleased about it, that all the hard work I put in is appreciated and everyone is very excited I’m just a little overwhelmed by it. Everyone is right behind it and ready to give it everything, you couldn’t ask for more.
Maybe I’m scared of where this is going. I’m not a risk taker, never have been, I’ve always played it safe. Heck, I’ve worked for the same company for 25 years! I’m frightened by the pace this is going at. 6 months ago I had nothing apart from a stack of unedited images, a folder full of rough draft writings and the idea that one day we’ll get it together. October and I now get to put “author and professional photographer” in my bio all over the place. I’ve always wanted it and now I’m this close to it I’m terrified by what it’ll bring.
Photography has been my escape, it’s always been mine and mine alone to do what I want with. If I wanted to share it, then I did. If anyone had a pop at it, then my ego would deflate faster than a cheap seaside beachball. I’m about to share almost 1,000 images that have taken me over 7 years to shoot. I’m about to let everyone tear into all my hard work. I know there’s going to be people who will slag it off, they’ll say they could have done better ( trust me, I saw they started on the day we announced it! ) and you can’t let them get to you. People who say nasty things are too scared or lazy to commit to a large project that requires they put in any reall work hard, it’s easier to tear down someone else’s hard work than do anything of their own.
It’s hard to explain to anyone who’s not been through a large scale project like this how much hard work goes into it. It didn’t really dawn on me until around 6 months ago. You work so closely with a group of people, every day something needs to be tweaked, sorted, found and adjusted. You spend hour after hour editing and writing, morning, noon and night. As things got down to the last few weeks, dozens of emails a day flying back and forth every day. The pace is relentless, constantly adjusting and guiding things into place. Then the last week or two is just full on, you read the book over and over and over, you’re looking at every word, every phrase, every image in relation to every paragraph. Making sure nothing you’ve written could be miscontrued, misunderstood, spelling, grammar. We had a dedicated proof-reader/editor who checked every single work dozens of times to make sure what I’d written made sense. Many times it would be background discussions between Mick and others to get your stuff up to scratch. Then one day it just comes to a screaming halt.
Seeing photos of my hard work finally sitting as ink on real bits of paper that will soon be in hundreds of people’s hands, f**king terrifying for someone like me. Within the next few hours there’s no going back. Thousands of sheets of paper will pour out of the printers, covered in my hard work. It’ll be chopped, sliced, bound, wrapped and shipped over to the UK. We wait while people get it and then wait for their opinions…
You know that scene at the end of the Italian Job, they’ve got the gold, they’ve dumped the minis off the mountain side and they swerve just too much around a mountain bend and the bus is tettering on the edge of the cliff, the gold is right at the back of the bus about to fall thousands of feet into a ravine. That’s what it feels like right now. It’s all stopped and we’re just staring at something that’s just out of reach not knowing if this will make us all slighter richer, more well known, the toast of our peer group or see to it that I never pick up another camera again.
“Hang on a minute, lads. I’ve got a great idea.”…
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