A crowded beach, decades ago: parasols in a row, a woman in a red bikini stretched out in the foreground, blue sea breaking white behind. Whoever took it is unknown; the print was given away, lost or misplaced, and ended up with Ashley Carter, who collects found photographs. In Subject : Found, his A5 perfect-bound found photography book, that beach runs across the first spread, and whether it would meet cleanly over the fold was his question from first email to final proof.
Inside are holidaymakers dangling their feet in a pool, a woman holding up two fish, two grinning men in heavy-framed glasses, a boy with a football in a field of yellow flowers. Ashley's introduction on page 1 explains the habit: he scans each find, touches it up a little and wonders why anyone thought that moment worth a photograph, then invites us to imagine "another life, another story". "Great photography and retro styling." We printed the 36 inside pages on 130gsm silk, a smooth coated sheet that keeps the grain and faded blues of old colour prints crisp on the surface, where uncoated paper would let them sink in. The 300gsm silk cover is matt laminated to the outer, so the young man at the harbour rail stays free of scuffs. Our sample pack was lost in the post twice; Ashley ordered on the quoted papers anyway.
Ashley's quote request arrived in October, the project titled simply "subject", and most of the five months that followed went on files. Harriet's preflight found the inside pages 156mm wide instead of A5's 148mm, and the cover set up as A4 landscape: two A5 pages with no room for a spine. The images were RGB, which prints slightly differently in CMYK ink, and some backgrounds stopped at the trim instead of running 3mm beyond it as bleed. "To save you a bit of time and head scratching", Mike sent our A5 cover template with the 3mm spine drawn through the centre. He also flagged page 1: the cover is glued to it along an 8mm hinge, so we suggested keeping text 10–12mm clear of that edge.
Read-across pictures are the most generous thing a photobook can do. Perfect-bound pages are glued at the spine, so a spread never opens completely flat and a few millimetres of any image crossing it vanish into the gutter. Keep faces and key detail away from the centre. On the loch spread the mountain's peak lands just left of the fold and two figures on a lichen-covered rock sit just right of it; on the football spread the boy stands well clear on the left-hand page. Our online proof shows pages singly, so Mike dropped the two halves of the beach scene side by side in InDesign and sent Ashley the mock-up. He approved the next day, and the 50 photography zines went out for delivery to London.
A5 perfect-bound photobooks are one of the formats we print most, usually at 40 to 100 pages; this is the slim end. Thirty-six inside pages on 130gsm silk make a 3mm spine, the thinnest we perfect bind, and below 32 we would say staple it. Handling a shelf copy this September, Mike called it a nice book with a very thin spine and wondered whether stapling might have suited it. Fair question: cover and pages make 40, a multiple of four, and a stapled book opens flatter. Perfect binding gives you a square spine with a title. Spine text normally wants 5mm or more; Ashley's is set small, white on pale blue, which Mike singled out at artwork stage for "the subtlety but coolness of the white text on the light blue background". Handle a book this slim gently: press a thumb along the crease and the spreads sit almost flat, and towards the back let the cover's hinge take the bend rather than the spine.
For found photographs with the weight of a hardback, see the lost photos hardback photography book we printed; our photobook printing page has the options. Got a shoebox of snapshots? Get an instant price at exwhyzed.com, or send Harriet and Mike your files for a free preflight check.
