Well it has been three months since we blogged last as our schedule in launching our new company has been fast and furious.  And speaking of launching something new!

Our friend Dr. Tom Elias is going to publish a new book in 2014 on American Viewing Stones and we would like to fully support his effort.  For those interested in participating please read a small excerpt from his document.

North American Viewing Stones: A Contemporary Perspective

“This book will feature approximately 120 to 130 excellent North America (Canada, United States, and Mexico) stones from private and public collections. The purpose of this volume is to illustrate the rich variety of North American stones and to acknowledge the perspective that North American collectors bring to the practice of viewing stone collection and display.”  Dr. Tom Elias

How you can participate

First download the PDF document from Dr. Elias – you can do that here.  One of the keys to participating is making sure you have excellent photographs- this means the correct lighting, distance and setting.  Also, remember this is for North American stones only, so you will have to leave your favorite Japanese or Chinese stones out of this opportunity.

The book will be portrait style with the dimensions of 11-inches in height and 8.5-inches wide.  Tom would prefer primarily portrait photographs so careful consideration of how far away you are when you shoot the photograph is key.  They photos also need to be in TIFF or RAW format.  If you don’t know what this is see the offer to help below.

Also, with 120 pages this means that many entries may not be published.  I hope you all agree that the selection is not up to us no matter how much we love our stone. I trust Tom to make the right decision to include those stones that best represent our hemisphere.  Perhaps if we solidly get behind this publication (buying them) there will be a Volume II.

An Offer to Help

In speaking to Tom a few weeks ago and to several of our suiseki club members, I thought KJ and I might offer to photograph your stones if you live in the Bay Area or are close by.

We only have about two months to get our photographs into Tom so I might suggest that if you are interested in getting together with us please let us know.  You can bring up to 10 stones for the shoot to make the trip worth your while.

We will setup in San Ramon, CA on a Saturday and for those that might be interested perhaps one weekday night as well.  After we see the response we can set a date and then schedule you so that you don’t have to spend all day sitting and waiting for your turn.  After the shoot, we will color correct the photos and output them into the format the Tom needs for the book and insure they they are sent to him promptly.  In addition, we will send to you those photographs in JPEG format for you to easily print or share as well as in TIFF or RAW format if you desire.

So please let us know as soon as you can so that we can setup a time to help you get some of your very best stones photographed.

For those that would like to shoot the photos yourself, we offer up a prior article on how we shot over 120 suiseki one day last year.  We hope it helps.

 

 

 

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