I’d like to announce a very special Free Friday offering here at Leora the Sane: my very first photography book!

Giggly is a collection of photographs taken in the Giggly Hills area near our home in South Minneapolis. I created this book as part of SoFoBoMo, an international group event where photographers create solo photography books over the course of one month, from shooting the photographs to layout of the book, to creating the PDF file and posting it for the world to see.

You can download my book at the Giggly page on the SoFoBoMo website. The file is rather large (12.4 mb). So be aware of your bandwidth if you decide to download the file. Giggly is released under my usual Creative Commons, noncommercial-noderivatives license. You are free to share this work, but please attribute it to me and link to my site.

You will soon be able to view Giggly online at Issuu (I’m working on getting it uploaded and into their system). Updated: You can now view Giggly online on Issuu. Issuu will allow you to view the book without having to download it. Good for those with bandwidth restrictions!

This was a great project for me, as it helped me immensely in seeing just what it takes to create a book. Even if, for now, that book exists only electronically. I have created Giggly at a size that will permit me to possibly get it printed through a print-on-demand company that specializes in photography books, just so that I can see it in print. And I’ve also toyed around with the idea of creating a very limited edition of hand-bound artist books. We’ll see where it goes…

I feel like I have the skills now to take my ever-growing collection of photographs and do something more with them, besides look at them on my own screen. That’s something I’ve wanted for quite some time. To have the ability to take my art to its next place, wherever that may be, a book, a collection of prints, or something I may not have even thought of yet.

I hope you have enjoyed these photo excerpts from the book. Click on any of the photos to view them larger. And then please download the book to enjoy the whole work and share it freely. After all, it is Free Friday!

Have a great weekend!

I’m back with another Free Friday wallpaper! This week’s desktop wallpaper is a photo taken right in my backyard. The focus is unexpected and the subject might not be readily apparent. So I’ll leave that as a little mystery. You’ll figure it out quickly enough I’m sure…

Enjoy the desktop in all the usual sizes. And have a good weekend!

Good evening!

I’m back with a new Free Friday desktop wallpaper. This one is one of my recent shots of Pru, the crabapple tree in our front yard. I’ve played with it in post-processing to give it a sweet duo-tone effect.

As per usual, you may download the wallpaper at many different sizes.

Enjoy!

So, last year I started a short-lived run of Free Friday desktop backgrounds, featuring my photography. Life, work, and school got in the way and I couldn’t keep it up for long.

But now I’m in the midst of a workshop that is inspiring me to keep art as an important part of my everyday life, something that I make time for. Which is why I’ve been posting up some photos and why I’ve got a Free Friday desktop for you today… on a Saturday. Oops! This was meant to go up yesterday, so I’m keeping the title.

This is one of the infrared photos I posted earlier this week. I played around with it a bit in post production and I really like how it turned out. I’ve got the desktop available in my usual three sizes, for small, medium, and large screens. And as a special treat (mostly for me), I’m introducing an iPhone/iPod Touch sized version, too.

Update: I’ve added one more desktop size, 1024×600, a pretty standard size for many netbooks (including my wife’s). I had thought I did this in previous iterations of Free Friday, but I guess not. From now on, though…

Enjoy!

Good afternoon! I am fully aware that, once again, I am posting a bit later than Friday. But I trust you will find it worth the wait.

Because today I unveil the Free Friday offering I’ve been working on for the past few weeks, a Leora the Sane 2009 calendar!

The calendar features several of my photos and has a lovely hand-drawn feel, if I do say so myself. Each month is sized to be printed as an 8×8 square, which you can post or bind as you wish.

Here at the Sane household, we are planning on mounting a picture rail in our entry way, so we can keep three months, printed on card stock, up at once.

If you use the calendar, leave a comment to let me know how you use it and what you think of it. I’m thinking of doing something like this every year, as well as offering other printable things on Fridays, in addition to my current collection of desktop images. Maybe next year I’ll design something more traditional, or maybe something even more… unique.

To download the calendar, right-click each half of the year and “Save link as…”. This will download a zipped archive of the corresponding JPG images for the pages for that six months.

Happy belated Thanksgiving! Thank you all for reading and enjoy!

Just enough time to post before heading off to a birthday party.

This is another of my favorites, some bare fall trees silhouetted against a gloomy sky.

Enjoy! And if you are heading to the party this evening, see you soon!

Here are the free desktops for the week, an abstract shot I did as a possible submission towards a “Blur” theme on JPG magazine’s site. I ended up submitting a different shot, and not being selected anyway, but I always liked this one.

Enjoy!

My in-laws are out in the livingroom right now, on their twice-annual visit. So I don’t have a lot of time (and will probably be scolded when my darling wife finds out I’ve been blogging instead of visiting).

But here they are, the free desktops for the week. This is a shot I took last week at my brother’s, of his chameleon Dunin. She was perching on my hand when I took this photo, and I didn’t quite have my white balance set right. So his pretty green lizard temporarily became a pretty blue lizard. I loved the color cast so much I had to keep it, even if it is not really what she looks like. I call this one “Dunin Dragon” (’cause I’m just that geeky sometimes ).

Enjoy!

Yes, I had my photo all picked out on time. Then I got really busy on homework. Then there was an impromptu party for some out-of-town friends. Then the dinner party yesterday evening. And today we’re heading to my brother’s for my mom’s b-day celebration.

Definitely a crazy weekend.

But now the Free Friday desktops are ready. Enjoy!

By popular demand (well, popular-ish), here is a desktop from my group of Mackinac “sampler” photos.

These adirondack chairs got the most comments of the bunch, and it is definitely one of my favorites, so here you go!

Enjoy!