What is It With Photographers, Blur Shots, wanna-bes and bleeds ?

September 1, 2008 by roland.

I must confess that every time I run into someone claiming to be a professional photographer they seem to go on and on about wanting to create a beautiful blur shot which is really attention getting. A blur shot involves having the model or whoever walk as fast as they can while the photographer travels the camera with them snapping pictures. Since the background is stationary it blurs.

Here is a wee bit of information for you photographer boys and girls. You are the only ones who find these shots interesting. Personally, if I’m thumbing through a magazine and come across a blur shot in an article, I pitch the entire magazine in the trash. If the same thing happens with another issue I cancel my subscription. We won’t even talk about what happens to books with a blur shot in them or on the cover.

While we are on the subject of books, I need to lob up this one again. I ran into yet another supposed publishing/printing professional that went on and on about bleeds during a conversation. Suffice it to say, I have put out six books now (Four under my own label and two under another publisher’s label), I have never ever used a bleed. My books are currently shipping to over a dozen countries. Granted they aren’t competing with the “Harry Potter” series in volume but they more than pay for themselves and they open the door to consulting gigs I wouldn’t otherwise hear about.

For some reason I cannot shake the phone conversation I had a few years ago with someone who was actually instructing kids in some form of Publishing Curriculum at a local university. He was also working in the copier/printing center at a local office supply store. Actually I called there getting some business cards printed (I really tried to send the business out as locally as I could, but in the end went with a mail order place where I could just upload the document file.) He went on and on about all of the new software to handle bleeds. He also went on about the class or classes he taught at the college on the subject. Finally I could take no more and dropped the bomb on him that I had been a published author for nearly 20 years and NEVER used or dealt with a bleed.

I don’t know why this is coming up today. Perhaps it is because it is Labor Day and it was around Labor Day a few years ago when this all occurred. I just want to pass on this little bit of wisdom.

Professionals never use either bleeds or a Microsoft product in their work.

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