Grip & Grain: Multi Format Motorsport Photography Book – Available on Blurb

After a couple of years of doing motorsport photography, I decided to put a collection of my best images together using the online book publishing service Blurb Books. I wanted to showcase the different formats that I have used to photograph motorsport over the past couple of years into a 7 inch hard back book, which you can buy on the Grip & Grain – Multi Format Motorsport Photography page on Blurb.

Using InDesign to create my motorsport photography book

The Blurb service provides a variety of tools to create a book with, and I took advantage of the InDesign plugin that they kindly provide to put together my book. This plugin auto generates both the pages and cover, depending on the specification of paper and finish.

The finished Grip & Grain book, in the 7x7inch format, with Premium Matte paper.

This auto generation made creating my book much easier, and using the provided colour profiles I could make sure that the book would look as it did on screen once it had been printed. I used a Spyder 4 Pro monitor calibration tool, which also made preparation of images much easier.

A lot of scanning and preparation

There was a lot of scanning and editing of images for my book, which is around 100 pages long, as film photography is a large part of the work that I do when at the various racing circuits around the UK. I chose a square format as this would allow for all of the different formats to work on the pages. These included everything from Polaroids, 6×6 shots from the Mamiya to the 35mm photographs from digital and film cameras.

Photographs from the book all had to be prepared and put into the correct colour profile before sending my book off for print.

Keeping the motorsport photography book interesting

With so many photographs from a single subject, I wanted to keep changing the types of images that I put onto the pages to keep it feeling fresh. To do this, I mixed depth of feel shots with panning shots, or black and white images with colour to create contrast through the book.

Mixing up the types of shots to keep the book exciting. I combined colour images, black and white film photographs and panning shots to add variety.

Print quality and finish

Once I had completed my book in InDesign, I used the plugin to upload it to Blurb so that I could send it off for printing. After around a week my book arrived, and I was amazed by the quality. Images were correctly printed with accurate colours, and text appeared sharp and crisp on the page. I chose to print my book on the Premium Matte paper, which felt excellent and worked especially well with black and white images.

The print quality of the book was excellent, with strong colours and a nice feel to the Premium Matte paper

The binding and quality of the backing was also excellent, and the book feels substantial and solid in the hand. I wanted a minimalist feeling to the book, and used the Foot Lambert brand throughout with the captioning and text inside the book.

The Foot Lambert branding goes throughout the book, excellently shown in the high quality printing Blurb provide.

An excellent product – that you can own too!

Overall I was really impressed with the quality of the book from Blurb. The plugins allowed me to very accurately create a book on screen that would soon appear in my hand. If you would like to buy a copy of my book, you can do so on the Grip & Grain – Multi format motorsport Photography book on the Blurb store.

Blurb Books in conclusion…

I found the process of creating my Blurb book very easy, and the professional tools allowed me to have complete control. I’m already planning another motorsport photography book that I will create with blurb, as well as a magazine that I want to create at the end of the year containing my articles and photography from this season of motorsport.

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