This publisher will help you turn your iPhone photos into a fine art book

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Mobile photography meets the mobile photo book with an on-demand service by publishing house Out of the Phone.
Mobile photography meets the mobile photo book with an on-demand service by publishing house Out of the Phone.
Photo: Out of the Phone

Publisher Pierre Le Govic turned his mission into the company name. Out of the Phone seeks to liberate the beautiful photographs being made today by smartphones.

His Paris publishing house has produced coffee table-worthy books of some of the best photographers documenting the world with their phones. Now Out of the Phone wants to make it easy for everyone to preserve their work with a tangible book.

Out of the Phone is building a print-on-demand book platform that would give mobile photographers a nifty little travel notebook with room for as many as 50 photographs.

The project is currently on Indiegogo for funding to build a web application for shooters to design their own books online and print the 8.25 x 5-inch bound notebooks with premium offset paper that can hold full color or rich

Out of the Phone photo books
An on-line design platform would let you lay out your own travel-sized photo book.
Photo: Out of the Phone

black and white images.

Backers of the project can get one travel notebook printed with their photos for about $30.

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Smartphones, led by the iPhone, has been a major disruption to the camera industry over the last 10 years. Millions of people have forgone conventional cameras in favor of the camera in their phones, appreciating the barrier-free operation – point and click – but with results comparable to expensive cameras.

Four years ago, Le Govic started a blog to celebrate mobile photography, which led to the founding of his publishing house. As he recognized some really beautiful work, he grew concerned about the life of these images, that they may be lost before every getting transferred or backed up from the phone.

“I realized that behind the huge stream of photographs posted every day right from the phone was hidden talent,” Le Govic said. “Our mission is to bring to life those volatile digital snapshots by engraving their trace on paper.”

The fine art books have been either collectives or hand-picked talent, like San Francisco’s Richard Koci Hernandez. But Le Govic sees the on-demand project as a way of creating a larger collection of mobile photographs in book form.

There are several companies that offer drag-and-drop templates for easy bookmaking, but the travel notebooks by Out of the Phone have the hip feel of Field Notes or some of the other bespoke, analog notebooks in the artisanal stationery market.

Out of the Phone books
The travel notebook style format will accommodate 30 to 50 images.
Photo: Out of the Phone

The books come with a simple yet elegant cover in a variety of colors that will carry title and author text only.

The rounded-corner pages will have several display options, including right-side-only display, photos on facing pages or having one image bleed across both pages.

The Indiegogo campaign offers a number of perks, including portfolio reviews and special edition printings of travel notebooks. Certain works may be selected for sale in Out of the Phone’s online bookstore.

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