Ann said that David said:
> > One of my dreams is to do a calendar, purely as an ego-trip. Every year
> > I think about it :)
My mother thought about this every year for a couple of years -- for the past
few years she's been doing it. (With my photographs. My mother freely admits
she's no photographer.)
The first year she tried making a few for sale to friends and co-workers. She
found out that she'd have to sell them for quite a bit more than the typical
store-bought ones, in order to break even. So she gave that up and now she
makes them as Christmas gifts for family and close friends. They like them
(mostly, I believe, for the convenience of not having to look up all the
birthdays and anniversaries of relatives for themselves) and her gift decision-
making is simplified from "what should I give" each brother, sister etc.
to "what pictures do I want to use this year?"
I wonder if I should include the equipment details on the captions to encourage
my relatives to buy Pentax cameras? Hmm.
Anyway.
She creates the calendars in some inexpensive software app ('fraid I don't know
which! but if you're curious I could ask her) and the photos are printed on the
backs of the calendar pages, directly from Photoshop Elements -- in previous
years, Photoshop, or, even earlier, PhotoDeluxe. We use the Epson Stylus Photo
inkjet printers for these projects. We often choose to print the photos on
Photo Inkjet Paper (Epson) which, you may know, has one "printable" side. We
print the calendar part on the "non-printable" (off-white) side, and that works
fine. We like to laminate the front cover to add durability to the calendar,
because it has to support the weight of the binding and the pages for a year,
hanging on the wall, and we generally have the laminating and the binding --
sometimes spiral, sometimes "comb" binding -- done at Kinko's. Again, this
would get pricey if we were trying to recoup the expenses in sales, but they're
not terribly expensive for us to give as Christmas
presents.
