Capstone: a photobook dummy and exhibition plan

The capstone brings the course together. You will take one body of work and plan two complementary outputs: a photobook, realized as a working dummy with a full production specification, and an exhibition, realized as a complete plan ready to send to a venue. The two outputs share a master edit but are edited, sequenced and designed for their own formats. You will also prepare a combined budget and funding plan, a schedule, a risk register and a short reflection. This lesson sets out the deliverables, walks through an illustrative example using an invented photographer and project, and provides an assessment rubric. Numbers in the example are illustrative; use current quotes, venue information and fees for your own capstone.

Capstone deliverables

Your capstone package should contain the following items.

The illustrative project

To show how the pieces fit, we follow an invented photographer, Mara Lindqvist, and her project Low Water, a four-year study of a river town as the river shrinks through repeated droughts. The project includes landscapes of exposed riverbed, portraits of residents, interiors of homes and businesses, and archival photographs lent by the local historical society. Her master edit has 96 images. She wants a book that readers can live with and a touring exhibition that can travel to regional galleries. Mara, Low Water and the venues and figures below are fictional and used only for illustration.

Step 1: Brief and format edits

Mara's brief states that the book is the primary form, carrying the complete narrative with an essay by a local writer and the archival photographs, while the exhibition is a companion focused on scale and the experience of the riverbed. She makes three format edits from the master edit: 60 images for the book, 20 for the exhibition (including four very large landscapes that work only at scale and two archival images shown in a vitrine), and 10 for an online sequence. Twelve images appear in both the book and exhibition; the exhibition sequence is organized by room rather than by the book's chapters.

Step 2: Book specification

Mara chooses a portrait trim of 240 × 300 mm, which uses 16-page signatures efficiently on her preferred printer's press sheets, with 128 pages. She plans section-sewn Swiss binding so spreads open well, a 150 gsm silk paper for the plates, a 120 gsm uncoated paper for an 8-page essay insert, and a printed cover on 350 gsm board with a debossed title.

Step 3: Dummy and prepress test

Mara builds a rough dummy from small prints to test the sequence, then a working dummy printed on an inkjet printer on a silk-surface paper close to the final stock, trimmed and sewn by hand. She tests it with five readers, including two residents of the town, and revises three spreads where pairs created unintended meanings. She soft proofs her files with the printer's profile, checks effective resolution of every placed image, sends four test spreads as PDF/X-4, and orders contract proofs of eight demanding images: night interiors, a pale riverbed and the archival prints. She asks the printer to reproduce the archival black-and-white images as tritones.

Step 4: Production route and costs

Mara requests quotes from a Canadian offset printer and a European offset printer for 600 and 1,000 copies, and from a digital printer for 300 copies.

Step 5: Price, funding and sales forecast

Mara sets the retail price at $55 after comparing similar books. Through a distributor she will receive 40 percent, or $22, per copy; at events and online she receives the full price minus payment fees and shipping. She forecasts channel sales and runs a simple simulation to see the range of possible outcomes.

import numpy as np
rng = np.random.default_rng(430)
trials = 20_000
run, unit_cost = 700, (7800 + 700 * 8.20) / 700           # landed cost per copy for 700 copies
direct = rng.triangular(150, 260, 380, trials)             # copies sold directly at $55 less 5% fees
trade = rng.triangular(80, 200, 320, trials)               # copies through distributor at $22
free = 60                                                  # review, legal deposit, funder and gift copies
sold = np.minimum(direct + trade, run - free)
share_direct = direct / (direct + trade)
revenue = sold * (share_direct * 55 * 0.95 + (1 - share_direct) * 22)
print(f"unit cost: ${unit_cost:.2f}   printing total: ${run * unit_cost:,.0f}")
print(f"median revenue: ${np.median(revenue):,.0f}")
print(f"10th to 90th percentile: ${np.percentile(revenue, 10):,.0f} to ${np.percentile(revenue, 90):,.0f}")
print(f"chance revenue covers printing: {np.mean(revenue >= run * unit_cost) * 100:.0f}%")

unit cost: $19.34   printing total: $13,540
median revenue: $18,137
10th to 90th percentile: $14,675 to $21,727
chance revenue covers printing: 96%

The simulation suggests that three years of sales will very probably cover the printing bill itself, with a median revenue of about $18,000, but the range is wide and printing is only part of the project: design, proofs and the exhibition add much more, as step 7 shows. Revenue also arrives slowly over three years, while the printer must be paid before the launch. Mara therefore plans a funding mix: a publication grant application, a crowdfunding campaign offering the book and a small signed print, and presales at a launch event at the historical society. Funding reduces the amount she must recover from sales, and the forecast gives funders a realistic picture.

Step 6: Exhibition plan

A regional public gallery is interested in Low Water and has sent a floor plan: one room with 28 m of usable wall in four walls, a ceiling track at 3.6 m, dimmable LED spots and floods, and climate control. Mara's exhibition concept places visitors on the riverbed: the four large landscapes, each 150 × 120 cm framed, occupy the long walls; twelve medium works at 60 × 75 cm framed form sequences between them; two archival prints sit in a vitrine with documents from the historical society; and a short looped video of the riverbed plays on a small screen near the exit.

Her lighting plan sets contemporary pigment prints at about 150 lux and the two archival prints in the vitrine at 50 lux, as the historical society's loan agreement requires, with UV-free LED sources. Labels are placed to the right of each work at a consistent height within the venue's accessibility range, in English and French because one of the touring venues is in a bilingual community. A large-print booklet and an audio description of the four large landscapes are available, and the video is captioned.

Step 7: Combined budget and schedule

Mara combines the book and exhibition budgets, because some costs and funding overlap: the same scans and edits serve both, the launch can coincide with the opening, and a grant may support both outputs.

Mara's schedule works backward from the gallery opening, which is also the book launch. The critical path runs through final edits, design, proofs, printing, binding and delivery of the book, which takes longer than framing the exhibition. She sets file delivery five months before opening, with framing starting three months before, and schedules the press release eight weeks ahead. Her risk register flags late book delivery, grant refusal and damage on tour as the highest risks, with responses for each: a digital short run of 50 copies as a fallback for the launch, a smaller first edition if the grant is refused, and custom crates with condition reports at each venue.

Assessment rubric

Your capstone will be assessed on the following criteria.

Presenting the capstone

Present your capstone as you would to a publisher, curator or funder: a concise package with the brief, the dummy, selected spreads as a PDF, the exhibition plan with elevations and installation mock-ups, the budget and schedule, and a one-page summary. Practice a ten-minute presentation that explains the work, the two outputs and how they relate, and the key decisions. Bring the dummy; let your audience handle it. Be ready to explain what you would change with more money, or with less.

Reflection

Write 500 to 800 words reflecting on the process. Consider which decisions were most difficult and why, how the book and exhibition differ and what each adds, what testing with readers and viewers changed, where your estimates of time and cost were wrong, and what you would do differently next time. Reflection turns a single project into lasting professional knowledge.

After the course

Many photographers produce their first book and exhibition from a capstone project, sometimes years later after further work and fundraising. Keep your files, quotes, schedules and contacts organized; they become templates for future projects. Continue to look closely at books and exhibitions by others, attend fairs and openings, and build relationships with printers, designers, publishers and curators. PHOT-499, the photography capstone, gives you the opportunity to carry this planning into the production of a professional body of work.