savethewords.org

savethewords.org

After coming across a Save The Words related entry on my blog, Secret Notebooks • Wild Pages, the Save The Words team asked if I would be interested in sharing the photos I shot for the post here on their fan page. It's with great lubency that I'm submitting them here.

Several out-of-date dictionaries have moved with me... from place to place for years. Apparently heavy old lexicons aren't leeftail, because I've rescued mine from garage sales and liberated them from recycling bins. I love browsing their pages in my succisive moments, and discovering unfamiliar words, and I've often wondered why more of them aren't still in use.

For this series of photos my models were two fusty Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionaries (unabridged). One, from 1969, is five and a quarter inches thick — and though I don't have a scale, I would guess that at 2,295 pages it easily weighs in at 10lbs. Oddly, I can't find a date on the second dictionary, but it's slightly more ornate with a decorative, embossed cover. The stacked deck of pages contained within have lost their neatness thanks to it's broken binding, giving it the appearance of having a fluttery, deckled edge.

I shot these with a Canon Digital Rebel xti and a Sigma 70-300mm macro telephoto zoom lens at Av 5.6 and a shutter speed of 1/25. I was experimenting with giving the images a soft dreaminess, and in doing so these tattered, old, water-stained books seemed to achieve a state of venustation. At least I thought so, and I hope you do too.

Come visit my blog http://secretnotebookswildpages.blogspot.com for more photos and flosculation! And keep saving words!Read More