Lupinicious

On the permitted use of the photos: lupinicious.deviantart.com/jou… - Website (not much to see yet): www.lupinity.com

Hello everyone,

sorry about not having uploaded anything for such a long time - if you cannot find a way to fit everything in a journal title anymore, you know there has been a lot going on!
I was busy with work and travelling and thus have not had the time to do much with the photos I have taken in the meantime. This is in fact the first weekend since the first October weekend where I'm actually at home again...

So one after the other:

Back from the US

I have been to the US for three weeks in October, visiting the International Wolf Symposium in Duluth (MN), the Wildlife Research Institute in Ely (MN), and Wolf Park in Battle Ground (IN). I brought my complete camera equipment, but surprisingly didn't take as many photos as I thought it would. One reason was the weather - we had everything from sun to snow, but most of the time it was rainy and cold. Another reason was the lack of opportunities - I was looking forward to take photos at the International Wolf Center, but I realized that shooting through the glass is just not worth it - every shot is blurry in several spots, the glass used is just not made for taking photos through. Instead, I took photos of red squirrels, birds, black bears and raccoons around the Wildlife Research Institute. Wolf Park was not too spectacular either, photography-wise. The fencing was very uncooperative, unlike most of the chainlink in the parks in Germany I usually visit. The AF had a hard time, and most of the time the bright light lit up the silver chainlink so much that it produced an impression of bright grey fog despite the 400 or 560 mm focal length I have been using.

Anyways, I might have some nice shots to upload soon, I just haven't looked at all of the photos yet and certainly haven't had the time to prepare any for uploading. Maybe this weekend!

Calendars are almost sold out

Today I have shipped the last few of the Lupinity Wolves 2014 calendars to Amazon. I just started to reclaim some of the calendars that have not sold yet in retail so I can stock up Amazon again for christmas.
I didn't think that I might be out of calendars before the end of the year AGAIN... but it's likely that this will happen. So if you were planning on getting one for christmas... do it soon!

Next calendar?

Also, I started planning the next calendar. I am still not 100% sure whether it will be one for 2015 or 2016, but since there are a lot of photos available that would do well in a 2015 calendar already, I might choose to release one next year too (that requires snow to fall though: I'm short on outstanding snow photos ).

US release

Now, there are lots of options for a new calendar. First of all, I am currently planning a release in Europe and the US, to improve the availability for US customers. That will most likely include an Amazon listing in the US offering free shipping. US orders were so low this year that I am not completely sure that this is a good decision, but the requests I got during my US visit in October were so overwhelming that I think I'll give it a try.

Appearance

The calendar as it is obviously deviates in a lot of ways from standard calendars, especially on the US market. For one, the Lupinity Wolves 2014 calendar is bigger than most calendars, with a size of roughly 11.7x16.5". It is printed single-sided and is hung on a wire-O-binding. Calendar and photo are both on the same page, and are individually designed to blend into another.

Pretty much all of the commercially available calendars are saddle-stitched double-sided calendars with the photo on the upper page and the month's calendar on the other. The calendar is then hung using a hole in the top center of each page. While - in my opinion - this lacks the premium-quality look and rarely hangs straight down on the wall, this system has certain advantages too.

Here's some of the pros and cons I see with that:

Pro:

• The photo is on an individual page and can be cut out and framed after the calendar expires, if desired.
• There is no text or other elements on the photo
• There is a lot more space for additional information on what's seen in the photo and of course, there is more space to note down appointments for each day.
• The calendar is a bit lighter, which makes mailing and handling easier

Con:

• Less classy, "cheap" look
• The paper *maybe* has to be less heavy than in the current calendar, because it needs to still fold without breaking (this is still to be determined)
• The calendar takes up more space on the wall.
• Saddle-stitched instead of wire-O bound
• A bit more expensive to produce (twice as many pages)

Your opinion is important to me...

I'd love to hear what you think about those ideas. Should the next calendar be a saddle-stitched and double-sided?
What are the pros and cons you see?

On the permitted use of the photos: lupinicious.deviantart.com/jou… - Website (not much to see yet): www.lupinity.com




Hey everyone,

just a short note (I will add more later) - the Lupinity Wolves 2014 calendar is now available... on Amazon!
The supporters / voters already know this for a while and enjoyed a 20% discount for their help in the meantime.
Now, the calendar is available for everyone on Amazon UK -> www.amazon.co.uk/Calendar-Lupi… and on Amazon Germany -> www.amazon.de/Kalender-Lupinit…

I decided to team up with Amazon this time and see how that goes. The good thing is, you get the full Amazon service and of course FREE SHIPPING to Germany, the UK and 15 other eligible EU countries (see update below!) Check it out!
Unfortunately, Amazon US is completely separate and I can't list the calendar there without paying another full pro seller account, with is extremely costly. Sorry guys, you have to order at Amazon UK too, but the good thing is: while shipping is not free for non-EU-countries, it is MUCH cheaper than any shipping rates I could get. For example, shipping to the US is 6.98 GBP, while I can't get anything below 15 EUR...

[Updated] This year, a lot of things changed. The most important changes are:

Paper quality
First of all, the paper quality is one third heavier than in the 2012 calendar. I'm glad to report that this fixes the problem with curling pages on wet or cold walls that sometimes occured with the old one. I have a test calendar in the back of my car, directly in the rear window, exposed to sometimes about 60°C and direct sunlight, as well as one in humid conditions, and both are still in perfect condition after the first 3 weeks

Print quality: finish
In the 2012 calendar, I decided to choose a Matte finish due to popular request. I re-evaluated the options, tested several other paper types and finishings, and finally came to the conclusion that a glossy finish looks much better while still not being shiny and that it's still possible to write down personal notes even with pencils. So, this year the finish is 250 g/m² glossy, which is also the highest quality available at this moment.

Print quality: cover
In order to give the cover of the calendar an extra shine and a nice haptic, I decided to spend some extra money on a UV coating that just looks spectacular. I used that on many other prints before, so I know how great it looks and feels while touching it does not leave any fingerprints. I would have loved to use that on the whole calendar, but besides making the calendar much more expensive, this would also make it impossible to note down anything in the calendar (unless you used Sharpies or similar permanent markers)...

Protection
To protect the calendars from any damage, especially because they are this time handled and shipped by Amazon, each calendar is shrink-wrapped individually. That was very costly unfortunately, but necessary to ensure a perfect result.

ISBN
Unlike the 2012 one, this calendar has an ISBN (international standard book number). This is also very expensive for individuals, but since I wanted to see if I can get it listed by Amazon (and whether it's worth the immense effort after all), this was a necessity. Besides Amazon, other retailers also need an ISBN to index and process an item in their stock.

And the most important thing that didn't change: despite the higher costs, I decided to leave the price unchanged - that's a high risk for me, especially because the print run is considerably higher this year, but I hope it'll work out if I can find more retailers interested in offering the calendar.


A word on the Amazon listing
The Amazon listing of the calendar is quite an adventure for me. Since I order a lot off Amazon myself and was always happy with their professional packaging and delivery times (and the free shipping of course), I thought this would be a nice thing to try for the calendar in order to give you the best possible experience when buying one.

This is an expensive endeavour, and chances are I will lose money on that experiment. Amazon is targeted at retailers that offer plenty of products year-round and they charge a rather high monthly fee for the account as well as enormous fees on each sold unit and for handling, packaging and shipping. Amazon earns way more money on each sold calendar than me, but I guess that's how they grew that big...


And a request...
As you might have noticed, I'm listed as some sort of third-party seller for my own calendar Amazon does that on purpose with new sellers for the first 90 days. In those 90 days you have to earn a higher status. Good feedback on the products and service is crucial for that (which is odd, since the shipping and customer service is provided by Amazon themselves...).

Also, I honestly stand no chance on Amazon against all the mass produced calendars that are not yet on the market, but as soon as they are, they will sell thousands of copies and my listing will probably just get overrun No one knows me, no one knows my photography, no one knows the quality of the calendar and if it's worth a look. Again, feedback is crucial for people to see what this calendar is all about.

So I do have a request: if you buy a copy of the calendar this year, could you please also consider leaving reviews and customer feedback? Just honestly write what you think and what's probably useful to other wolf enthusiasts considering buying one. It would be awesome if it was a five star rating, but if you think the calendar doesn't deserve 5 stars, then feel free to put in any other rating that you feel appropriate. Especially in Germany, buyers seem to be quite reluctant to review it, while on the UK platform, I was very surprised and happy to see a review of it by Monty Sloan and some of you have already put in a review of their own too, thanks for that!!


Amazon France, Italy or Spain, anyone?
Oh, and another request: if anyone from France, Italy or Spain would love to see the calendar listed locally on their country's Amazon pages, I could do that right away - but my French is quite rusty and my Italian and Spanish practically non-existent Thus, I cannot translate the product description in French, Italian or Spanish quite well. If anyone of you is able and willing to help, we can probably make it happen

Since France, Italy and Spain are not in the list of countries eligible for free delivery from either UK or Germany (which is really odd in my opinion!), a listing in these marketplaces would mean you (and other people from your country) could then order the calendars with free shipping... so please help if you can?


[Update on free delivery by Amazon]
I just had a look at Amazon's free delivery service.

For orders placed on Amazon UK, delivery is free to the following European destinations: UK, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Gibraltar, Iceland, Republic of Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Sweden.
For orders placed on Amazon Germany, delivery is free to the following European destinations: Germany, Austria, Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Switzerland.

On the permitted use of the photos: lupinicious.deviantart.com/jou… - Website (not much to see yet): www.lupinity.com

That's it, folks - the Lupinity Wolves 2014 calendar is now in print, the voting is closed. Thanks everyone for participating, it's much appreciated!

Printing will take approximately until the end of June, so the calendar will be available in early July.
That's also when the winner of this year's calendar voting raffle will be drawn, so stay tuned

It was a tough choice again this year. For the 2012 calendar, there weren't many photos left out that I thought should have made it into the calendar - but this time, a second calendar could have been made out of the ones that have not made it in. I originally thought that it would not be possible to publish a calendar every year, but this situation leaves the option of publishing a 2015 calendar as well. On other hand, I wasn't able to take a lot of photos this year yet, so I gotta pick up the pace to be able to throw some new material in while still having enough left for the regular 2016 calendar. We'll see!

The next project will be a number of postcard sets that I wanted to do for quite a while. We did some with the German Wolf Association a couple of years ago, and we're still selling those out, but I would like to do some new ones, with better photography and better quality prints...

On the permitted use of the photos: lupinicious.deviantart.com/jou… - Website (not much to see yet): www.lupinity.com

Howdy folks,

I'm currently in the prepress process for the Lupinity Wolves 2014 calendar. There's good and bad news, like always.
The good news: I finally got the ok from Wildtierpark Edersee to use the photos taken at the park, so I can use the whole range of photos in the voting.
The bad news: I need to swap out some of the photos because the range of colors does not really match the CMYK color range and with some photos, that means I simply can't print them.

One extreme example is Black and Green, the voting winner for May:


Wonderful greens, but only in RGB. Take a look at the before and after comparison between RGB and CMYK in my sta.sh: sta.sh/010fgcn3qehr



Doesn't really look nice anymore, does it? Yes, I could shift colors some to match the CMYK range, but then it's not green anymore, but yellow. It's not an option, really.

The reason for all that is that the CMYK color range is much narrower than RGB, this diagram shows that pretty well:

As you can see, the really bright and saturated greens are cut off... bad luck!

Now fortunately there are enough runner-ups to cover the loss of photos, and most of the other photos are not affected anyways.
Basically, all photos with a lot of green in it are affected - the March winner (the leap-wolf) is affected too, but while it does look more yellowish printed than the original does and it loses some detail, it still looks alright.

Since I strive for the highest possible quality, please don't be disappointed if Black and Green is not going to be part of the calendar... you wouldn't like the way it looks printed, believe me

UPDATE: Persistence pays off

Alright then - Black and Green is back in the race I suppose. I managed to achieve a pretty good approximation of the greens in CMYK color range. Well, let's make this a tutorial then

First of all - one precious gem in Photoshop I wasn't totally aware of is hidden in View -> Proof Colors. This totally saves my day.
This option lets you work in RGB mode while viewing the output in real time in the selected color scheme, in my case the CMYK color scheme of the offset print machine this is going to run on.
If you just convert the photo into CMYK, information is lost - and you cannot get it back by fiddling with the colors. In the preview mode, you can!
I used hue/saturation to get the details in the cut-off yellowish-green areas back (mainly by decreasing saturation), but that made the photo appear rather dull. What really saved it for me was Shadows/Highlights, as it balanced the levels out just perfectly and brought back a variety of greens I tought weren't possible in CMYK.

No, it's not the same greens - but I'm just about to say it works for me! Decide yourself:


Yes, it does look less vibrant in CMYK, but the overall contrast and impression of the photo is rather nice the way it is now.
It has a slightly darker mood to it - it's pretty much like sunshine vs. overcast skies - but I still like it
So I'm asking you: should I stick with the Black and Green one or replace it with a different photo?

On the permitted use of the photos: lupinicious.deviantart.com/jou… - Website (not much to see yet): www.lupinity.com

First of all: thanks to all 230 people who have participated in the calendar voting so far!

The voting period will be extended for one more week until Friday, May 24th. Head over to www.lupinity.com/calendarvotin… to vote if you haven't done that already!

I am currently still waiting for permission to use some of the photos in the calendar, which will take a couple more days.
I've talked to the officials today and it looks good, but still has to be approved by the park management.

The voting for some of the months is already quite unambiguous, in other months it is still likely to change .
So head over and vote! The odds for winning a free calendar are still very favorable compared to other raffles: currently it's at 1:125.

Current voting standings

Warning - if you don't want to know which photos are likely to make it into the calendar, don't read on!
There are also a couple of questions at the end of the journal...


















Okay....




























you asked for it





























Here it goes:

Cover

The following has been chosen as cover image with currently 14 votes more than the runner-up.

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Not satisfied with this selection?
Come over to www.lupinity.com/calendarvotin… and vote to make a change or tell your friends to vote!
Some months are a really close call still and not yet decided at all.

A couple of things are likely to change, for example too many fall-like photos have been voted in between August and November - don't know about where you live, but we only get a very short fall lately, definitely not more than two months

A couple of questions...

Also, it is quite strange that no puppies have been voted in so far. So my questions for all those of you who are still reading this:

1. Do you think the calendar should have any puppy photos? Could it do without?
2. The cover photo has also been voted in for November. In the 2012 calendar, I did not use the cover photo for any other month. Do you think the photo should be featured in November as well (the cover photo will be quite loaded with text and stuff all over...) or do you think there should be 14 completely different photos in the calendar?
3. What do you think about the selection so far? Does it meet your expectations / hopes or is it completely different from what you have voted for?