PHOTO TIP #5 for Illustrating Your Next Book: THINK ON YOUR FEET

For many years I worked with professional photographers who illustrated my books with their photos. We worked as a team--I wrote the text and the photographer took the pictures. I learned a great deal about photography from them. Recently, I have been both author and photographer for several of my books, including Hatching Chicks in Room 6 and Butterflies in Room 6.
As I was cleaning out files recently I found a list of photo tips from my friend and fellow Grinnellian, Martha Cooper, a professional photographer best known for her photographs of subway art in New York City. She is also the illustrator of three children's books, My Two Worlds, Lion Dancer and Anthony Reynoso: Born to Rope. 

At a class we taught together some years ago she handed out a list of photo tips. Today, almost everyone is a photographer--we carry cameras in our pockets in our phones. Whether you are illustrating a children's book, creating a magazine story, or assembling a slide show or family album, or even just sharing a favorite photo with a friend, I think you will find her advice useful. She says:

LOOK and THINK before you shoot. A good eye is more important than a good camera.
Tip #5:  Be prepared with all equipment you will need and ideas for shooting. Many subjects have little time or patience for photography. However, be ready to think on your feet. If your pre-planned ideas are not working, be open to other options. You may not have a chance to come back. It's up to you to make the best of the existing situation. Editors aren't interested in hearing excuses about why you couldn't get the shot. (Martha Cooper)

Example: My 100th published book, African Animals, an overview of African wildlife, is illustrated with a single photo of each animal. As the author of the book, I was responsible for obtaining all the photos. Many of them were taken by me or my husband Art when we spent four months in Africa in 197l. But there were some animals for which we did not have good pictures. So, my solution was to get the photos from other sources. Most are from our good friend Owen Floody, who had traveled to Africa several times and has a special interest in animal photography. Here is his picture of two ostriches battling one another. He had the luck and patience to be at the right place and the right time to get this amazing photo. 

AFRICAN ANIMALS is Now a Kindle Book

My book, AFRICAN ANIMALS is now available as an e-book on Amazon Kindle. It was originally published by Morrow Junior Books in 1997 and is out of print. The cover has been redesigned but the text and full color photos inside are the same as in the original book. AFRICAN ANIMALS was my 100th published book! It is illustrated with pictures that I obtained through photo research from a variety of sources including my own collection. Photo research is a bit like being on a treasure hunt and as I searched for just the right photos to illustrate this book it brought back memories of my trip to Africa twenty-five years earlier. I am happy to have it now available to new readers as an e-book. You can read it with a Kindle app on various devices (I use my iPad) or on your computer.

REVIEWS
School Library Journal, March 1997
Superb full-color photography, simple but intelligent language, and excellent organization make this a standout in the growing field of nonfiction for the very young. Almost two dozen African species, mostly mammals, are brought to life and placed in the context of their environs. A brief introduction to this lush continent, and a final note about extinction will get children (and the adults reading to them) thinking about their own place in the world. Animals are grouped by habitat (grasslands, forests, and deserts), and basic locator maps show the extent of each area on the continent. . . .Occasional questions provide a natural segue to open discussion. . . . This is a book that youngsters will want to return to again and again. Share it with story-time groups or suggest it for one-on-one reading.

Booklist, March 1997
Prolific wildlife writer-photographer Arnold takes a lucid look at 20 African animals. arranged by habitat (grasslands, forests, and deserts), the book features color photographs of such wild beasts as zebras, warthogs, and gorillas. . . . They show close-ups of the crocodile's sharp teeth, the dark markings on the cheetah's nose, the python's scaly skin, and the leopard's rosette-shaped spots. Given the brevity and simplicity of the text, it is surprisingly informative. Basic characteristics are cited along with questions to the readers: "How would you like to sleep in a tree at night?" Well done.

Sandpaper Camel Art Project

Knitted Creche from Chile

In scenes of the nativity at Christmas, the three wise men are typically shown riding on camels.  Here is a project that you can do making a picture of a camel on a piece of sandpaper.
Read about camels in my books African Animals or Camel and make a note sheet of what you have learned. Draw a picture of a camel on a piece of paper and cut it out. Trace the outline of the camel with a crayon onto a piece of very coarse sandpaper. Use crayons to fill in the outline and draw other desert plants and animals.  Place the sandpaper on a board or heavy piece of cardboard face up. Put a piece of wax paper on top of the sandpaper. Then put a piece of brown paper (shopping bag cut open) on top of the wax paper. Iron the sandpaper illustration with the heated iron so that some of the crayon beneath begins to melt into the sandpaper. The heat creates an unusual effect on the illustration. Cooled pictures may be hung for display. Students may post their note sheets beside the illustrations. (Adapted from Internet School Library Media Center) [You can look for African Animals (Morrow Junior Books, 1997) and Camel (Morrow Junior Books, 1992) in your library.]

Animal Cards for the Holidays on Etsy

Animal Cards at www.Etsy.com/shop/CarolineArnoldArt

It’s time to think of Holiday cards, and what could be more perfect than scenes of animals in winter!  If you go to my Etsy shop, CarolineArnoldArt, you can find cards with polar bears, penguins, pandas, and other animals that love the snow. Send them to your friends for the holidays! Cards are blank on the inside so you can write your own message.  Sets of cards also make perfect gifts for the animal lovers in your life.  Making the art is the first step in creating my cards. Each piece of art is a cut paper collage which I then scan to make my cards.  Each card is then printed and packaged by hand in my studio.  I use a thick 100% cotton rag paper to make gallery quality prints. If you can’t bear to send the cards, they are beautiful framed.  Happy Holidays!

Photographing Animals: Patience is a Virtue

            Noisytime for Zoo Animals is one of six books in a series about how zoo animals eat, sleep, play, bathe, have babies, and make noise.  The photographer, Richard Hewett, and I spent many hours at zoos watching animals and waiting for just the right moment to take a picture.  It is important to have LOTS of patience when photographing animals.  You can’t ask an elephant to “just turn a little more this way, please”!  Even though the photos look as if we were close to the animals, we were always safely on the other side of a fence or inside a vehicle.  Richard used a telephoto lens to make the animals seem close-up.  While he took pictures, I watched and listened to the animals and took notes that later helped me to write the book.
      Other books in this series are Playtime for Zoo Animals, Mealtime for Zoo Animals, Sleepytime for Zoo Animals, Splashtime for Zoo Animals and Mother and Baby Zoo Animals. They were published by Lerner in 1999. Although these books are all out of print, you may be able to find them in your library, online, or as e-books.

Something About the Author

Volume 228 of SATA (Something About the Author) Gale Publications, a reference book of children’s book authors and illustrators, is scheduled to be published in July; the online version will be available a month or so later.  It includes an updated entry for me and my books, prepared by the SATA editors.  As I previewed the copy, I was impressed with the thoroughness of the research and completeness of the entry.  It is a long way from the first entry about me in SATA, Volume 28, published in 1984, which featured a photo of a very young looking me and an illustration from my second book, Electric Fish (Morrow, 1980).

In 1987, I was asked to contribute a biographical essay for the SATA Biography Series, Volume 23.  This was my first time to reflect on my career at length. (I had 10,000 words to play with, which seemed like a lot at first, but really only allowed me to cover the high points.)  The timing of the essay was ideal.  I had just published my 100th book (African Animals, Morrow 1997) and was feeling amazed at my good fortune of having made a career out of something I loved.  In my final paragraph I wrote:
This essay has provided me with the opportunity to look back over what I have accomplished, but it is also a time to look forward.  I hope to continue to write about subjects I love, including natural science and ancient cultures.  I would also like to do more writing for younger children.  Although I have not had much time to write fiction recently, I would like to do more of that and perhaps even get back to doing some illustration.  Perhaps in the future I will have the chance to do some writing for CD-ROMS and the new electronic media.  No one has a crystal ball to see in to the future.  Each project is a new adventure and often leads to opportunities not yet imagined.  The dilemma is not what to do next, but how to choose which of many paths to follow.

As I read that paragraph now, I marvel at how much has happened in the fourteen years since it was written.  I HAVE done more writing for younger children, published two fiction books, and reestablished myself as an illustrator.  But the real changes have been in the electronic world.  Again, we need a crystal ball to know where that is leading us.  Meanwhile, though, I continue writing with the confidence that there will always be a place in the world for good books for children.