Erin Stroebel Shadow Conversations 1 Front Cover and 1 Back Cover + 66 Inner Pages = 68 Facing Pages (34 Actual Pages) Shadow Conversations is a poetry photography book that reveals introspective thoughts about the way that someone experiences the world. The target audience for the book is anyone that it may pique the interest of, but if I were to give a range it would be those that are 12-35 years old. All of the poetry within is clean, though occasionally dark themed, and investigates ideas of existentialism that young teens or those still finding themselves in their 30s may find captivating. Although, if we are honest, do we ever really finish finding ourselves? This book contains 20 original poems penned by me between the years 2012 and 2017. All photography was done by me between the years 2018 and 2020. The books layout and design were also fully created by me. During the course of the project I received lots of feedback that affected the outcome of the project. Initially I had planned to hand write the poems over top of the photos instead of using the typeface, but it was ultimately decided that a format like that would negatively affect the legibility of the poems. I was also assisted greatly in making sure that all poetry had enough contrast to be legible on top of the printed photography. I'm ecstatic to see my poetry immortalised typographically and photographically in a way that makes the poetry even more exciting to read than in the original format. Having a hardcover book that promotes my merit as a poet as well as a photographer and layout designer is a thrilling prospect for me. I can only hope to expand my library of personal works.

If I were to complete this project again, I would anticipate the following time commitment:

3-4 days to accumulate written poetry and digitise poems into scans and also typed documents

3-4 days to take photos based on the poetry

3-4 days to complete a thumbnail sketch for the entire book, then cull and finish initial colour-correction on the selected photos, and complete an initial layout

(after receiving feedback)

3-4 days to finalise the front and back material as well as complete any final revisions to the body material

~2 weeks if I were to do the whole project again in the same exact way (not including printing)

I had not previously used InDesign for a project so it was exciting to learn new programs and new solutions to creating. I loved seeing this idea come to fruition in a unique and compelling manner. I hope to continue to push the bounds of what people expect from photography and design to show the world a fuller extent of what art means.

(The proper viewing method for the pdf is in a downloaded view in Adobe Acrobat. Right click on the thumbnail below and choose Save Link As and it will prompt you to save the pdf. Once open, one should then click View and then Page Display and make sure that Two Page View and Show Cover Page in Two Page View are both enabled. The book will not appear in pdf web viewer properly.)