Thomas P. Peschak Blog

A blog is born…

I have been threatening to write a BLOG for a quite a while now, I just haven’t found the time with my manic photography schedule. 250 days a year on the run does not leave much time for anything else and when I have to decide between being behind a camera or a computer, the latter always comes off second best.

Then fate intervened lumbering me with an enforced extended stay in Ajman. If you don’t know where Ajman is don’t feel too stupid, before I became marooned here I had never heard of it either. Ajman is the smallest of the United Arab Emirates, situated about 1 hour west of Dubai towards the Oman border. It has little of the glitz of Dubai and is blessed with a grittier real world feel. It is the height of summer here, 47°C (113 °F) during the day. I also haven’t seen the sun for a while as it has been obscured by sand and dust storms.

I traveled to Ajman to spend some time at Asiatic, a printing company that is busy positioning itself as a leader in environmentally sensitive printing methods. It is here where my forthcoming book The Lost World will be printed. My first three books were produced by mainstream publisher so while I was very closely involved in the design, I had nothing to do with the final printing process. While not unhappy with the results I felt that there was room for improvement in the printing quality and accuracy. The book the Lost World is being published by the Save our Seas Foundation thus allowing me full control over all stages from design/layout to printing and binding. The finished title will then be distributed by major publishers/distributors worldwide.

All was going fantastically well until…technical gremlins began to sabotage the process. A flying start soon ground to a halt. I was supposed to have arrived in London yesterday and will now only leave Monday at the earliest. My days are spent alternating between sitting in a windowless air conditioned office and short burst of standing in the printing hall, where the temperature is 30 degrees Celsius (15 degrees less than outside) to make color adjustments and approve each final page. The staff at Asiatic are amazing and always go way beyond the call of duty! Working with them has been a great pleasure. To finish this mammoth task though we all have at least three 18 hour days to look forward to. No better time to start my blog then!

Printing Update: All printing is now complete and 5 sample copies of the Lost World are at the binders as I write this. I will approve them tonight and then the rest of the print run will be bound. I can’t say thank you enough to everyone at ASIATIC for their dedication and attention to detail. Their  work ethic and enthusiasm are mirrored in the quality of the resulting book.

“Saving the Ocean One Photograph at a Time”