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Big Brother Mouse is an organisation in Laos that publishes books in the Lao language. It's not a money-making project: it provides educational resources for Lao children, as well as employment and training for Lao authors and illustrators. It's the brainchild of a retired ex-pat publisher from the U.S. who now lives there.
It's a project my wife Jane has been helping for a while (we just sent over a collection of art education books, she's done some writing for them, etc).

They want to do a book on Animals of Australia, and they need material for their illustrators to work from. I have some of the required images myself, but we're hoping that some of the DSLRUsers members will be interested in helping. We have a copy of their Animals of Africa book here in Melbourne if anyone would like to have a look.

The photos are more likely to be used to help the illustrators than to be reproduced in the book, but some may be. We can arrange to credit anyone/everyone whose photos are used for either purpose (illustration, reproduction) and for them to receive a copy of the book (won't be printed for around 9-12 months from now) if they supply postal address.

You will retain copyright to your images, but you would be providing Big Brother Mouse with a licence to use the photos for either purpose in the production of this book. As it stands at the moment, your only payment will be a credit in the book, along with a copy of the printed product.

The list I was given:

• Australian fur seal
• bilby
• black swan
• blue-tongued lizard
• bottlenose dolphin
• cockatoo
• dingo
• echidna
• emu
• fairy penguin
• frill-necked lizard
• galah
• goanna
• great white shark
• kangaroo
• koala
• kookaburra
• lyrebird
• magpie
• numbat
• pelican
• platypus
• possum
• quoll
• Tasmanian Devil
• wallaby
• wombat
• yabby

As I said I have quite a few of these, but if you have better ones I'm not going to stand in your way. I definitely don't have any White Pointer photos...

If you're interested in helping out, please contact me and we'll take it from there.
Thanks!

What a great idea. Unfortunately I don't have any images of any of those animals otherwise i'd love to contribute.

hello Dave,
Where would you like the photos sent and what parameters would you like them to meet?
Regards Colin

I might have a few that fit the bill, where would you like them, what size images...etc

What a great opportunity, but I'm not a good nature photographer

yeah i've got a few of them where do we send them, sizes etc?

DaveB wrote:[*]galah
[

Should be plenty in members mugshot gallary

MATT

Thanks folks!
A few people have PM'ed me with URLs to images they have online.
Another way will be to email me small images at david at burren dot cx.

In doing our initial selection we'll only need relatively small images. For the final versions we'll take what we can get.
In fact there might be quite small images that are still useful as material for the Lao illustrators (keep in mind that these guys won't have seen these animals in person).
But also keep in mind that it's not taking long to build up a big collection of kangaroo and koala images!

The Animals of Africa book is about 18cm x 23cm, and although they do have a couple of A4 books I think this book will be the smaller size. If you follow that link you'll see a sample page layout (although I don't know that the new book will be done exactly the same way).
So even a good 2 Mp image could be plenty, but I'll be happier if we can supply bigger images. Apart from improving the quality, it will increase the cropping/layout options.
I will be working with them to sort out the sharpening details, so in the end I'll prefer images without any output sharpening applied.

DaveB wrote:although they do have a couple of A4 books I think this book will be the smaller size.

Scratch that. I now gather it's more likely to be the A4 size.
Not that it'll make a big difference to the images.

Thanks for the images so far folks, please keep them coming!
We'll be doing initial selections in the coming days: for now I'm just collecting candidates.

So far mostly I've been getting the usual zoo/park suspects: kangaroos, wombats, emus, echidnas, etc with only a few of the more-unusual animals thrown in. I haven't yet looked in enough detail to say that we've got "winners" in any category yet, so please keep them coming.

Thanks!

Is it a kids book, as I have some goanna shots, but he's on top of mrs goanna.

Australian animals and they haven't asked for a wedge tailed eagle??? I just happen to have a shot of one around here somewhere. Now let me see...

I'll see what I can dig up, I have a few that are in that list.

Thanks everyone. A DVD of images has been shipped to our friends in Laos. In the end we used images from:

• adam
• blacknstormy
• DaveB
• mark
• Vodka

Thank you everyone!
I'm not sure which images will be printed in the end and which will be used as material for illustrators (although I can guess with some of them, that decision will be made in Laos). All the above people will be credited in the book either way (none of us is making any money from this).

The book won't have an ISBN and won't be generally available outside Laos, but copies will be distributed to the contributors (I think they'll be shipped here and then redistributed).

I'm just glad my images can contribute to a worthy cause!

Ben

Guessing im too late for this one? Have quite a few of those animals in my collection after a visit to local open range wildlife park a while ago.

The books have arrived! It's simply titled Animals of Australia. We'll be distributing a copy of the book to each contributor (see the credits on the inside cover below) next week: just need to check current postal addresses.

Some of the images we provided to the publisher in Laos were used as source materials by the artists, some were used as-is.

Front cover:


Inside cover (the blue highlighting is mine):

Unless I'm completely confused, that would be mark, DaveB, adam, Vodka, and blacknstormy.
Congratulations folks!

Title page:


For more details about the books, please visit Bigbrothermouse.com.

A great result Dave and congrats to those who were able to contribute to this worthy enterprise.

Dave,

A great outcome, and thanx so much for posting this follow-up.

Looks great.

Alpha_7 wrote:Is it a kids book, as I have some goanna shots, but he's on top of mrs goanna.

Dave - that is sooo exciting
I was wondering how it was all getting along - can't wait to see it, and glad to have been of help
Hugs
rel

We got to see the book at the workshop today, it's fantastic - a great concept and very well done.
Nice pics too!


Elena

I'm very excited too! Can't wait to see it (my address hasn't changed)!

I went back to check the EXIF of my shot that was selected. Taken with a 70-300G. Just goes to show that shots taken with Nikon's budget lenses can still make it to print.

It hasn't stopped me from getting a 70-200VR though.

Ben

I've received the book this morning

Thank you

Got my book - thankyou !!!
Was such a thrill - and they've done such a great job !!
Only brickbat is to Australia Post that popped it into the letterbox, and left the letterbox open- in the middle of a thunderstorm - oh well, it is drying out nicely

I'm surprised AusPost didn't deliver them earlier this week, but I'm glad they're arriving (relatively) safely. We tried to protect them against bending, but waterproofing didn't happen...

Thanks again for your contributions!

Luckily, mine arrived safe and dry today. Glad I could be part of this worthy cause. I have no hesitation to help out again if any of my images are appropriate for future publications.

Ben

Hi Dave,
Long time no posts from me, sorry about that.
Just wanted to let you know that I also received my copy this week in the mail. Thanks again for the opportunity to contribute.
Cheers
Mark