A First Endorsement

I wish to begin with a quote by Henry Ward Beecher:

"The overweening self-respect of conceited men relieves others from the duty of respecting them at all."

Perhaps you don't understand why now, but you will understand soon enough. You see my first endorsement is of myself. Well not exactly myself, but of the Photography 139 Calendar. I even have photographic evidence to back up my claim that I think very highly of my own calendar.

What can I say? It is a good product. Let me just tell you a little bit about its production. I started by taking a gander at the thousands of images that I have made in the past year. Then I eliminate all the fluff and filler and distill the essence of my photographic vision down to 13 images. 1 picture for the front cover and 12 for the monthly images.

Then I adjust and crop the images so that they will print with the proper dimensions and spatial relationships. I also combine 12 of the images into 1 image for the back cover.

Once the images are ready to be printed, I begin creating the actual monthly pages. The useful part of the calendar. Generating the calendars is easy enough, but then I check various websites, astronomical charts, and other calendars to get all of the most important days on their proper dates. Thankfully "Squirrel Appreciation Day" is always the same day every year.

After all the files are ready to go, it is time for the printing. This year we used two separate printers, although they both are HP printers that use their Vivera print cartridges. This year the images were printed on Staples brand premium matte photo paper and the calendar pages were printed on stock card.

Once everything is printed, the pages are sorted so that they are placed back to back with its mate in the proper orientation. I usually accomplish this task, but sometimes a small Italian man helps me.

Then the calendars are off to the 2nd part of this 2 man operation. Jesse is that second man. He fires up the Royal Sovereign laminator and all of the pages are laminated. This process can take up to 10 runs through the Royal Sovereign to guarantee the best seal.

After the lamination, the calendar pages are taken to the comb binding machine to have holes punch in the top and then bound with a comb binder. This year the comb binders were white. In the future I think we will branch out in a more colorful direction. It is the promoter in me.

Now that the Photography 139 calendar is bound, it comes back to me where I man a modified 3 hole puncher that places a hole in darn near the exact middle of the top of the calendar so that it can be hung up on the wall and is ready for display.

Then I either hand deliver the calendar to your home, place of employment, or talk you into coming to see me at work.

How good is this calendar? I know that it is hanging up on walls as far north as Mendota Heights, Minnesota and as far south as Fairview, Kansas. It is proudly displayed in the work areas of employees at the Younkers Salon, Principal Financial, Ortho Computer Systems, and Atlas Media Group.

This calendar is so good that people have asked for the mistake pages. Begging for my scraps. This calendar is so good that a very mild acqaintance got in my face about how "I could be making money off of this!!"

I hope you got one because I have some sad news. When I walked into the Photography 139 Print Shop in the calendar wing, I found the following sign posted next to the water cooler: