Had a hard time picking a photo to post. I backed up a lot of stuff recently and cleared off my drives to make room for book production so everything is a mess right now. I have literally THOUSANDS of images of plants on here but I can't bare the thought of it... I obviously love plants but if I look at and/or colour correct one more botanical image I will vomit. I haven't done a count but within the last week I colour corrected approximately 140+ photos and at least that many if not double the number of illustrations. I looked through and contemplated more pictures of plants and gardens than I can possibly count. So ya, no plant pictures here anytime soon.

Holy shit have my colour correcting skills improved.

But can I just say that of everything I am most excited about the full-page photos?! No full-colour book about gardening is complete without super-crazy plant porn and I had 5 or 6 pages reserved for full-page bleed pics that turned out awesome. I had a total breakdown last week when everything was priority number 1 and I hadn't even contemplated which of hundreds of medium format shots would end up in the book... and I had to chose immediately because I had to get them hi-res scanned... and then I started calling around and no one would do them in such a short turn-around time. I was literally pacing around yelling "Who should I call? Who should I call? What's the fucking number?" And then nearly falling apart trying to dial numbers and sound composed on the phone. The thought that those pages would either go bare or end up with smaller photos was too much. I really felt like the last six months of work would be a complete wash without those 5 or 6 pages of full-bleed photos. I still do.... but somewhat less hysterically. Anyway needless to say the pages were filled. Hooray for Mr. Risk

The biggest lesson I learned: next time I will have an assistant.

Songs that have been on regular repeat over the last few days especially:

"What Becomes of the Broken Hearted" Jimmy Ruffin
"Black Man" Stevie Wonder
"Slipping Into Darkness" Carl Bradney. This "Darker Than Blue" album is so awesome. Every week I'm in love with a new song.

Zoran told me that it is common for people to go into a period of depression when they finish a book. I don't think this will happen because I have tons of plans that have been on hold for months that I'm eager to get to. But it still worries me a bit. It's only been a few hours and I can feel my mind letting go and entering into a new state. I feel like crying. But I think it's more of an emotional release then anything. I've been in this really unhealthy state for a while of having to be open enough to be creatively good but closed off enough to hold my shit together under enormous pressure. Now I will just be a person.