Oh my.....it's been a very long and intense four days, as I pushed to get this book done so I could stay on schedule. The push started early Friday morning, when I had to carefully pack up all of the birds for the six hour photo shoot took place at the studio of Dan Kvitka. I had spent the previous week creating a crude dummy of the book (with the help of my new intern Sonja!) so we would know our background colors and positioning in advance and save some time. Here's a few still shots of the day, beginning with a shot of all the freshly unpacked birds laid out on the table waiting for their moment: 
we started with A, and proceeded to shoot all the other birds on the light blue backdrop.
This was my view for about half of the day--making sure it looks right in the camera and comparing it to my dummy book.
Once I had my photos, I spent a mad 24 hours on the weekend doing the real layout of each page on my computer, followed by a thorough proofreading by my childhood friend Janet Harris on Sunday night, and then yesterday was spent updating the editorial corrections and working with the publisher on all the pesky last minute details. Phew! Sooooooooo glad to have this one in the can!
And now.....I have a little surprise for you! There's one more bird I made for the dedication page--a special bird I designed along with my goddaughter Birdie. At some point, I took a photo of her holding the drawings we did together, but I'm not sure where they are, so I'll just present the title page to you now:
Birdie requested a pink bird, and we decided it should have a Davy Crockett hat on--one of Birdie's favorite characters. (The other historical contender for this bird's outfit was Abraham Lincoln!) I want to save the bird to be a surprise for her when the book is published, so I will leave you now with this sweet shot of Birdie and my dog Weegee at the soap box derby races last month.
take care,
Hilary
Hilary
