Case Study: Telling a Story With Pictures
Avalanche Dog Heroes is a nonfiction picture book, which was photographed entirely by amateur photographers. It was my job to coach their coverage, send them out into the field with focused shot lists, edit the thousands of pictures which resulted, and build a photo edit which best supported the text and created a visual narrative which flowed from page to page with suspense and beauty. The author and I then collaboratively built Piper’s hero story.
Role: Photo coach, Photo Editor, Layout Direction, Visual Strategy
RECOGNITION
Junior Library Guild selection
Pacific Northwest Bestseller
Towner Children’s Choice Award
Oregon Spirit Honor
What People Are Saying
“Present-tense narration paired with dynamic color photographs puts readers in the moment…”
— Kirkus
“The training of the dogs is both hard work and fun—a point made clear through photographs of Piper dashing through the snow, chewing on toys, and embracing Cohen.”
— Publishers Weekly
“Almost every spread captures a dynamic dog training scene amid beautiful snowscapes.”
— School Library Journal
Reflections.
A full dummy. For the next book project, I decided to build a full book dummy in InDesign, which I could then hand off to the designer. This did the following: reduced back and forth, eliminated unnecessary errors, and dramatically reduced the workload for the author by removing a laborious photo documentation process
Naming convention. I also honed the photo naming convention and photo intake process to clarify and streamline my own workflow.
Documenting process. Although I did document some of my process, I would have benefitted from taking more detailed notes and reference photos throughout, which I could have used post project to evaluate all aspects of the project and my contribution to it.