"The most beautiful volume ever done [on Marin] is Point Reyes Visions" - Steve Mc Namara, publisher, Pacific Sun

This book is a pioneering project in book publishing. We call it an artisan book because we photographed, wrote, scanned, and designed it as a combined process. Except for running the press and the bindery work, we did it all. Owning the computer and scanning equipment, we were totally free to do what we wanted, without a client, deadline, or publisher. This allowed a rare degree of creative freedom and a tight integration of all the aspects of publishing the book, including marketing. While Kathleen is the author and Richard is the photographer and book designer, we collaborated to the point of exhausted harmony. We are both everywhere in the book. We lugged cameras and scurried when the light was happening. Anecdotes slowly became facts. Learning programs, rebuilding the stupid desktop, just keeping the computers running, and archiving the work were Herculean tasks. Desktop computers are barely able to cope with a book of this size. Every step had obstacles. We worked when we had the confidence to proceed. The payoff came when we could visualize and create fearlessly. We hope you enjoy this book as much as we enjoyed creating it.

The photography was accomplished with the following cameras; Nikon and Mamiya RZ67 systems, a Fuji panoramic camera, plus Sinar 4"x5" and 8"x10" view cameras. The film was mostly Fuji Velvia plus some Kodak T-Max 100 and Kodachrome. The text is Caslon 540 Roman and the headline typeface is Bureau Eagle Book. This paper is 150gsm Lumisilk Matt Art paper. It is casebound with Black Saifu Cloth wrapped over 2.5mm board. Endpapers are 150gsm woodfree stock. We scanned from the original camera films with our Dianippon Screen 1015 AI drum scanner into Adobe Photoshop 4.0, where we corrected the color, cleaned and sized the images. The book was designed in Quark Xpress 4.04 on a G-3 Power Macintosh with 320 megs of ram and 13 gigabytes of ultra scsi hard drives. We used an Agfa imagesetter. Retrospect managed the huge backup job of over 50 gigs of images! We burned CD’s of chapters as they were created, which we later took to a printer friend's shop to make halftone films for platemaking. This involved using a Agfa imagesetter and a litho film processor. The positive 175-line films went to Singapore for press proofing and plating. The pages were run 8 up, 16 pages per signature, and we slept in the plant on the couch and were awakened every 2 hours to proof. We personally press checked each page as it was run. The book was later bound and shipped back to Oakland, CA where it went though customs. We built a small warehouse to keep the books on our land. To sell the book we took it aroud ourselves and to this day, send the copies out ourselves via UPS and Fed Ex when someone is getting a birthday present.