In 2005, I self-published my first book, Fantasies: A Metamorphosis of Sexual Attraction. Over the last few months, I’ve been re-editing the text and images for a reprint. The new version comes with an updated title as well, Fantasies Wide Awake.
From out of print to reprint
The process of reviewing and re-editing my first literary and photographic venture became a journey of photo editing that evolved into creating a NFT collection of the final images.
Fantasies was photographed in Milwaukee, WI by two local photographers as work for hire. Lisa Richelle was the project photographer and took most of the images. Shalina Ali took the cover photo series. Shalina’s work was for a calendar I produced in 2004, VoLux Full-Figured Calendar. Some of her images did double duty in Fantasies as well, which was my first book and poetry collection. The cover for Fantasies was designed by Jon Polito later in New York City when I moved there; he also designed the covers. I used a vanity printer and ordered about 200 copies of the book, most of which were sold on 125th Street in Harlem. Quite the beginning!
For the 2022 reprint, I didn’t take any new photos, but I did pull in some images from other photo projects. This version also includes images by Jason Lam (NY), Qiana Reed (OK) and Willis Roberts (NY).
Re-visioning vintage
Shalina Ali and Lisa Richelle photographed on 35mm film. The book images were in black and white as the interior of the book was black and white.
My first edit for the reprint was focused on removing the background, smoothing out the lines and bright spots. Then tinted to a sepia tone. After sitting on that for a while, I came across a photo of flowers. From that point I began experimenting with making the images look more fantastical – like a bed of roses dipped in fairy dust.
Buy your copy of Fantasies Wide Awake here, on Amazon.com or BN.com.
Dipping into the NFT pool
The idea to blend the bouquet of flowers with the sepia images came from a brainstorm of creating images that would present as solid NFT offerings. With each blending attempt, I loved the look more and more. By the time I finished layering and compositing the images for the NFT collection, I realized printing the 2022 version of Fantasies in full color with this collection would indeed be an actual refreshing of an old work.
As I explore the NFT photography spaces, please fill free to view my collections on OpenSea (HarvestLifer: https://opensea.io/harvestlifer). The Fantasies Wide Awake NFT Collection is viewable at https://opensea.io/collection/fantasies-wide-awake-2022.
Please be patient with me as I am new to crypto, digital art and monetizing virtual assets. Uploading images to the collection is a learning exercise on its own. With practice comes understanding. I recently realized that uploading and listing for sale are different functions. Important to this process is understanding crypto wallets, transferring crypto between platforms as well as the associated costs. Transfer fees and gas fees eat account balances extremely fast. Essentially, nothing is listed for sale yet because I’m still moving crypto around and testing the site for the best gas prices and times (lower fees). Eventually, I will list the images one by one for sale.
If you have any NFT pointers, please share!
#nft #digitalart #photography #phlog #indiepublishing #publisher #photoediting
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