So we went to France in late March, and spent a few days in Paris on either end of a week in Brittany—our third annual Progress in those parts, with the usual eatings and wanderings (the Brittany parts mediated by our dear friends Rob and Barbara). I was able to spend several hours photographing in Père Lachaise and Montparnasse cemeteries, and that provoked another Blurb book project:

The v1.0 version can be downloaded (it’s a BIG file) here via a right-click and Save As. When we got home it occurred to me to look more closely at graveyards in midcoast Maine, and I’ve been busy on that front ever since. Later this week I’m going to Lowell MA to spend a day with members of the Association for Gravestone Studies, an organization I’d previously known nothing of. It turns out that the first 25 issues of their annual publication Markings are available at archive.org, and the several articles I’ve read have been fascinating.

Another Blurb book project escaped my desktop, a narration of the collection of photos I’ve taken of meals enjoyed at Home Kitchen Cafe:

and that book is also available for download here.

And as if that wasn’t enough, I’ve also put together a v1.0 of a project I’ve been working on for about 35 years:

I’m still working on the cover, but the book itself is available for download here.

These books were all produced with Lightroom’s Book module, which is a bit confining (a restricted set of page templates), so I’ve just completed a week-long workshop at the Maine Media Center in Adobe’s InDesign, a vastly powerful program that should make it possible to make much more elegant versions of the six existing Blurb books and a bunch of others that I have in mind to do. Should keep me busy….