The first draft is complete! And I’ve reviewed some of Ambrose’s suggestions. I write ‘some,’ because after I addressed them, he went back to read the whole thing again, so I’ll have one more set of them to work through.
In the meantime, I’m working on selecting the photos that I’ll include in the book, and, if he’s still working on it after I’ve selected, then I’ll work on captions as well. I’ve started work on the cover, but I can’t get very far on that until I choose the cover photos.
I wish I could use photos of the beautiful lakes I hiked by on day 3, but that day was particularly smoky. I will include some of them in the book, but they aren’t clean enough to use for the cover image. I definitely want a nice mountain shot for the front cover, preferably one that shows a nice “Sawtooth” type mountain.
For the back cover, I’m thinking of a shot with water. Perhaps Fern Falls, but the time of day that I passed those meant that those shots weren’t lit the way I’d prefer. If I were going to photograph them, I’d want to be there in the late afternoon, with the sun shining on the water and not into my camera lens.
There were more blurry shots than I realized this time. The pressure of hiking long distances in a tight time frame made me a little more careless with the shutter. I sometimes re-took a blurry shot, but more often I didn’t – I’m sure it was a good idea at the time, but I do regret being so hasty now.
Well, I do forgive myself for the haste. I remember the pain in my feet. Even in good boots, they got swollen and sore and complained. And they were just the loudest among the complainers of my body. I pushed myself hard on that trip.
I did get a lot of good pictures. It’s not going to be easy to winnow them down for the book. I know I can at least eliminate all the blurry ones, but that won’t be enough of a bar. I took over 1000 photos! Only one way to do it – I better get to work.