DIY: Print photos on old dictionary pages

I first saw this idea floating around the Pinterest boards. People had printed photos onto old dictionary pages. I just happen to have a HUGE unabridged dictionary from 1937:

 I love the marbled exterior and the tabs. But since I don't actually USE the dictionary other than for decor, I thought it could stand to sacrifice a few pages for an art project.

MAKING THE PRINTS

There's really not much to it:
1. Carefully rip out a page and measure it.
2. Choose a photo (or in my case, 6)
3. Convert the photo to black and white. It's best to use photos with some contrast and a decent amount of white space. Whatever is white will not actually print white on your page; it will just show through to the background.
4. The first tricky part is to figure out the margins so your photo will print on the right part of the page. Not that it's necessary to be exact with this kind of thing. I measured the size I wanted, made a blank document in Photoshop at that size, opened my photo, copied and pasted it into my blank document, and then used the Free Transform tool to make it the size I needed with the margins I needed. The best thing to do is approach it with a very forgiving attitude. Apply the "galloping horse" rule (which is that if you don't notice the error when galloping by on a horse then it's fine).
5. The second tricky part is feeding your paper into the printer. If your paper is old like mine was, you'll have to carefully hand feed it.

Once I knew it was going to work, I used the first page of the dictionary for this photo I took of an iron gate in Paris:

One feature of this particular dictionary that I really like is the letters down the right side.

Another cool thing that you can see on this crop of a bike photo is the dictionary illustrations that show through, like these wasps. I used all Paris photos, which makes me wish I had an equally cool French dictionary to cannibalize. (The photos I snapped of these completed pages, by the way, had the awful lighting conditions of incandescent+sunlight, which is why the color doesn't always look uniform.)

 

The door knocker looks really cool, in my opinion, because of the contrast and the ample white space.

DISPLAYING THE PRINTS

I bought an old six-pane wooden window for $10 at a consignment store. I knew I was going to use it for photos, and it turns out that the panes are just about the right size for the dictionary pages. My plan was to simply tack the pages on the wall with decorative upholstery tacks and then hang the window on top of it. The trick is figuring out where to pin each photo. I hate doing anything that requires measuring and calculation, so I hung up the window, marked with pencil just outside of each pane, took the frame down, and then put painters tape to show where the divisions were:

(Did I mention how sick I am of that wall color? It's changing very very soon.)

I had to take the window on and off a few times and adjust the tape until it lined up pretty well:

Finally, I just started tacking on the pages, making sure that they were at least in line with each other (I didn't care if they were perfectly centered in each frame--galloping horse, remember?).

I used a variety of upholstery tacks that had been sitting in a drawer in the basement just waiting for something like this. Here is what it looked like before I put the window back up:

The detail of a chair (top left) seems to be a favorite. Top middle is my favorite, but I like them all. In fact, I have about 20 photos that are good candidates for this sort of project.

Finally, I hung the window back up:

OTHER OPTIONS
You can save yourself time by just framing the thing. Or better still, don't even frame it; just use decorative pins, tacks, or whatever. You could also save yourself the printing effort by scanning the dictionary page and making a composite, but I really wanted to print on the actual pages.

Maybe this will inspire you for your own project. If you do something and post it, send me a link.

BONUS!
Don't want to make your printer hate you by feeding it old dictionary pages? OK. Check out the tutorial I just posted on how to do the whole thing in Photoshop.

AND...You can also buy my exclusive versions of the prints you see here with all of the flexibility (almost any size) and durability of photo paper (or giclée, canvas, even metal) you can get them on my site.

(Conceptual) Projects

 Adding a little public display of affection to a straight-laced BYU campus.

For some, the term "conceptual photography" has a negative connotation. The current Wikipedia definition is relatively neutral:

"Conceptual photography as a part of conceptual art, a photography genre in which the artist makes a photograph of a concept or idea. Usually the conception of the idea precedes the realization of the photography."

The strict genre definition, then, quickly leads to academic philosophical existentialist debates (but then, doesn't everything?): Which comes first, essence or existence? Sartre be damned, I can never remember and don't really care. For the purposes of this ongoing compilation of posts, I am taking the broad view that all projects are conceptual once they are organized. Whether the idea preceded the photos or came from the photos isn't at issue in this list. The idea of this post is simply to get back to re-organizing the sidebar of my blog. That said, here are some posts that might inspire your own projects in some way:

• An intro to "concept" from when it was part of the now-defunct "monthly special"
• Inspiration from John Baldessari: a master of ideas
• When I was playing around with the idea of "photo within a photo" I did a two part post about turning my not-so-romantic surroundings into Paris (check out part 1 and part 2—they still make me laugh) and another post about remembering the orchards that were lost when my neighborhood was built.
• My love of street photography led me to create a Blurb book called Manif (short for "manifestation"—the French word for demonstration). You can look at the whole book in this post—just be click the view full screen box (the four diagonal arrows) in the lower right.
• My biggest project to date is the years-in-the-making ABC Paris project. It's interesting for me to look back at the origins, and then see how it ended up getting featured on Design Sponge and Black Eiffel, which resulted in a four-year contract with a company in Vermont. And of course, how can I not do some shameless promotion for the prints that you can buy.
• Another "project" (more like two things I made for a post)—OK, so idea for a project—is the "personality pie chart." I did one of my son Lucas and one of a friend in France. It could be fun to do something with later. Feels very commercial to me.
• A "things scrawled on wood in Paris" project is a casual ongoing project that looks at the kind of graffiti people did before there was spray paint. I have much better photos since I did the post—perhaps a follow-up will be in order.
• My long term Utah-based project is about State Street, and although I haven't done a real post about it yet, these "commute" photos came from a couple of hours of shooting.