Song of the Earth

Song of the Earth, a free publication printed by a group of local craftsmen in the craftsmen has created quite a stir in Oregon's artistic and business community. The idea started with nature photographer Ron Cronin. For a long time Cronin has been having a love affair with nature. His style of work is not affected by gimmicks or trendy techniques. He is a meticulous craftsman. Basically I want nature to be able to speak to the people through the agency of my camera. So I tend in a place like this simply to wander around and allow whichever compositions or species of plant or animal to simply grab my attention and then I want to record

its beauty with as much possible accuracy as I can so that the people who see those pictures then experience the scene or the plant or animal as if they are actually there. I would prefer them to feel that they have had a nature experience more than they have seen some kind of interesting photograph. So really I simply want to be nature's middleman. Ron's work is also influenced by a love of music shared by his wife Maria. A concert singer Maria is keenly aware of both sounds and nature and music based on natural harmonies. When Ron was considering doing a brochure to market his skills, he had the idea of doing a series of photographs based on music. A romantic German composer was the inspiration for what became a book, Song of the Earth. Well the title was literally meant to mean the sounds and the song of the Earth itself. Gustav Moller toward the end of his life wrote a piece called Doss Lied von der Erde which

is based upon some Chinese poems. And I guess that in passing Ron had seen the title of the work and it appealed to him and it struck a harmonious note with the type of work that he does. And so consequently the book began to evolve out of this notion. The basic idea of the book was to convey Cronen's personal message. But he began to think that maybe it could also show the finest printing and design available in Oregon, exporting the idea that Oregon has fine craftsmen in all areas. Graphic designer and publisher Gary Albertson, Cronen's longtime friend, collaborated with him on the project, the creation of a book not for sale but rather for promotion. He shared Cronen's vision and believed that a high quality publication would find an appreciative audience in both the arts and industry. His task was to ensure that the piece would come together. He says the job of artistic director is hard to define.

There's so many elements that you have to consume, it's hard to really put it into a perspective for anybody to see other than just juggling a lot of balls, different colored balls at the same time. And you can't really drop any one of them. The first challenge was to find a group of people who could meet his standards of perfection, whether a printer or supplier of paper stock. He spent hours on the phone asking specialists in production to donate their time and talent. We tried to do it on a and did accomplish a very masterful role, I feel, of doing it on a one-to-one basis with everybody rather than a large publishing company where everything is justified by a committee. This was more or less the best piece we could get from every particular person. Albertson says the design and layout of song of the earth was a demanding job. Even the smallest detail such as a serif on a letter, the direction of paper grain, or the width of a border had to be carefully considered. But the detail makes the difference. He spent

time that most others couldn't afford in day-to-day publishing. Another contributing group spending lots of time on the project was Why East Color. Their specialty, color separation, the first step in printing color photographs. Why East donated their computerized system and the labor to convert cronon slides and the text of song of the earth into color transparencies. Dwight Cummings of Why East explains the process. The system requires some kind of an original in the case that we're talking about one of Gary's Iran's marvelous photographs. And then it's up to us to keep that super clean, put it on the scanner, and allow the computer to take a good look at it. The training of the operator requires him to understand where the knobs have to be set, what computer programs have to be used to get the most out of that original image. You can see looking at the machines themselves, how they work. There's a keyboard, computer keyboard. There are places to enter the numbers that we need, and the decisions are made about how that

will best reproduce, and also what size it has to be, what screen ruling, how many dots per inch the printer requires, what kind of paper it's going to go on. All these things affect the computer program that we select to make the reproduction of the picture. After four color transparencies are made for each page, a proofing process is done. Proving shows how each of the final printed pages will look when the four colors are combined. The utmost care and time were taken by Cummings throughout the process. He says he was delighted with the results. There's been a lot of response to this. We've had, we have a hard time keeping samples here, everybody wants them. Our reaction to the final product was very grateful that we were able to take part in such a project. Usually we're in the midst of something that has to be done. Very rapidly is done commercially in which cost is the object, and the paper is not the best. The presses may not be up to standard, but here we were able to work on a project where we didn't have to count the cost. We

were asked to do the best we could do. The printer did the absolute best that he could do, and it was printed to a very high standard on superb papers. So we were able to hand this out and say, you know, this is what we're really capable of. Printing was the final and critical phase of the production of Song of the Earth. Dinographics printing enthusiastically endorsed the project and charged nothing for their services. They put Gary Albertson in touch with Zander's paper company in Germany, which donated paper. For Zinks were also obtained without charge. Byron Lysky of Dynographic says that when paper costs a dollar a sheet, there's not much margin for error. I've always said, if you can do it right the second time, by cracky, you better do it right the first time. The printing of Song of the Earth was a challenge, but the job was done with a great deal of attention to the smallest detail. The color separations from Y East were taken first to the plate making room at Dynographics. The fine dots for each color were etched into aluminum plates to be mounted on the offset press. The four color high speed press then laid down each color, one over another, starting with the black

and ending with yellow. Lysky enjoyed working with high quality ink in the excellent paper and was very proud of the results. He says he did the project for the love of it. Dynographics hosted a gathering to introduce Song of the Earth to local and regional companies and it was well received. The market for quality work that developed nationwide was a surprising bonus. Just our name getting from coast to coast, through this piece, this is in New York, it's in Florida, it's in San Francisco, it's in Los Angeles, and we are getting calls from all across the country on different projects like this. And there again people say, well, what does it cost? Well, I'll tell you something, if you have to worry about what it costs, you shouldn't be looking at this. It's same as if I walk into the Mercedes place. You shouldn't really look at how much gas mileage you're going to get on that car. You better

just be prepared to pay $45,000 for a quality piece. And so it's the same way with this piece. They want ballpark figures, but it is expensive. Putting together a work like Song of the Earth is expensive, but its creators are finding that it sells the concept of quality. This, they say, will certainly increase the export of organ craftsmanship. But it is important to remember that what many are calling an extremely promising marketing device succeeds only because of its personal message, a message which conveys one couple's joy in sharing the beauty of the environment and the sensual pleasure of music. Thank you.

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