First Men on the Moon: A hand made, hand bound photobook

By Nik Stanbridge

I’ve created and published quite a few photobooks in the past but I’ve always wanted to make the process easier, cheaper, quicker and much more predictable and repeatable. All that and to have them embody a hand-made and crafted/artisanal quality. After a lot of trial and error; a lot of false starts; a lot of tests, learning and experimentation, I’ve finally created my first such book: First Men on the Moon.

It’s based on the adventure of climbing through a skylight onto the flat roof of a student flat I lived in with a couple of close friends in the early 1980s. The images are from a couple of rolls of film for which I had contact sheets but I don’t think I ever produced more than one or two small 5 x 7 darkroom prints back in the day.

One of my 1980s contact sheets with chinagraph annotations

I’d always wanted to do something with the images and to give copies to my two friends who were up on that roof with me. I’ve been working on a much bigger book project using images from this era around the same group of people but that project is big and is taking a lot of time and work. A hand-made book of the ‘Moon’ images would be a quick way of getting something out in the meantime, and a good way of testing out all that I would need to learn to make a crafted photozine.

Some of the negs were in quite poor condition

I won’t lie and say that I kept it simple and didn’t overthink each aspect of the book because that’s exactly what I did.

Software

The software to design it was new to me as I moved to Affinity Publisher from InDesign for reasons of cost. Medium learning curve but I’m very happy with Publisher – it’s inexpensive and highly recommended (and I’m very picky about this sort of thing). I spent a lot of time making sure what I was doing with this book would be a template for future ones. That meant a document template, and page masters for each of the different types of page in the book (five I think).

Paper

I bought paper sample packs from Hahnemühle, Awagami, Fotospeed and Innova and spent a huge amount of time printing a test image with a wide range of ICC profiles and print media settings. And in the end settled on simple 170gsm inkjet paper. This was based on simple economics – some of these papers were very lovely indeed but they’re also quite expensive so I decided to save them until this first one was completed.

Cover design

Cover stock was easier as I wanted a splash of colour and here my choices were more limited (thankfully). But I did decide to jazz up the cover with a ‘tipped in’ image. This is essential sticking an image on the cover which solves the problem of not being able to print an image onto coloured card but it does introduce the challenge of how to glue paper to card without wrinkling. The answer is to use solvent based fabric glue rather than water based paper glue. I also decided to blind emboss the cover image into the cover card because I had access to a press, and a piece of copper of the right form factor. The result is truly lovely!

Cover image tipped into a blind emboss

Binding

I wanted this book to look hand made and to exude craftsmanship so I decided on Japanese stab binding which is much easier than it looks and exquisite to behold in the finished book. It might be straightforward to do but you do need a single hole punch and the right waxed linen thread. More stuff to source. I hugely enjoyed the binding process. It’s the very last part of making the book and is, as you can imagine, enormously satisfying.

Japanese stab binding using waxed linen thread

Page design

Here I really did keep it simple and stuck to a very small number of individual page layouts, and because they are each based on page masters in Affinity Publisher, changes and modifications cascade through the book automatically.

Anything else?

Oh yes, each page, cover and all, was scored with a scoring frame. This provides a more natural feel to the book when turning the pages and helps reduce the strain on the binding. I also used a proper wheel-based guillotine to cut A4 pages down to the A5 size of the book. But in order to get a guillotine with an edge/sizing guid, you have to go big (and expensive). another one off purchase of a lovely bit of kit that makes the job or accurately cutting paper so much easier and reproducible.

The whole thing, pages and cover and cover image, was printed on my fairly unassuming Epson ET-8500 printer.

Three copies. One for me and one each for my fellow astronauts.

I’m very happy with the resulting book and with the decisions I made in making it happen. I’ve learned a lot of new skills and obtained a lot or new kit that now put me in a place from which I can make more books. My plan is to make similar books based on my current photography projects and offer them for sale via my website.

“First Men on the Moon”, Evershot Road, Finsbury Park, London, 1983. A5, waxed linen thread stab binding. Tipped in cover image. Pages 170gsm, cover 300gsm. 26 pages. All images digitised from hand developed Kodak Plus-X 35mm negatives, and include digitised vintage silver gelatin contact sheets. Printed on Epson ET-8500.

Get in touch if you’d like any more info on any aspect of my processes, hardware or materials (or the Affinity templates).

I’m on Insta and I also have a website.

Share this post:

Find more similar content on 35mmc

Use the tags below to search for more posts on related topics:

Contribute to 35mmc for an ad-free experience.

There are two ways to contribute to 35mmc and experience it without the adverts:

Paid Subscription – £2.99 per month and you’ll never see an advert again! (Free 3-day trial).

Subscribe here.

Content contributor – become a part of the world’s biggest film and alternative photography community blog. All our Contributors have an ad-free experience for life.

Sign up here.

About The Author

By Nik Stanbridge
I've always been drawn to the ordinary, the decaying and the mundane. For me, it’s always been about capturing what’s right there in front of us that we all walk past without really noticing. I look for what’s hidden in plain sight that's either transient, disappearing or so obvious we’ve all stopped seeing it. Much of my work is about rendering the commonplace abstract - from muddy tyre tracks to architectural details, to utility workers’ paint on the road. I'm sensitive to ordinariness, transience, evolution and decay and attempt to convey it in these calm and strong images that have solidity and an engagement with the world.
View Profile

Comments

Russ Rosener on First Men on the Moon: A hand made, hand bound photobook

Comment posted: 16/03/2025

This is a really cool and useful thread. We often spend so much time obsessing about the lenses and cameras used to create our photographs, that we forget about the actual tangible presentation process! This concentration to small scale self publishing brings the end product into focus. Pun maybe intended! The graduate Art school I attended was heavily engaged in creating and publishing artists unique books and it was one of the thing we learned about.
Outside of grad school I rarely tried to put those skills into use. But as the decades and images have piled up the need to present them in a sequence I see fit becomes more urgent. Thanks for shining a light on your fantastic and exquisite work in making these images into something more than screen pixels.
Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Nik Stanbridge replied:

Comment posted: 16/03/2025

Thanks Russ. It’s such an important thing and while I do my best to create books and prints, and enter shows and exhibitions, there’s always more to do. But this is the point of this post and this process - it’s repeatable. I have already created another similar book based on one of my photo series and I’m planning an article on it; a sneak peak is available on my Insta.

Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Gary Smith on First Men on the Moon: A hand made, hand bound photobook

Comment posted: 16/03/2025

Cool that you did this Nik! Are you sure that others wouldn't want a copy?

Thanks for your article!
Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Nik Stanbridge replied:

Comment posted: 16/03/2025

Thanks Gary! That’s an interesting point that I probably should have given more thought to (and asked my fellow astronauts about). Expressions of interest would perhaps sway me to make more copies.

Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Jeffery Luhn on First Men on the Moon: A hand made, hand bound photobook

Comment posted: 16/03/2025

Nik,
Thanks for a well written article about making an album. It's an interesting project of a bookmark in time with your friends. You mentioned it was cheaper than ordering albums. Did I understand that right? I'm 72 now and a lot of my travel and wild experiences are behind me. I make albums now, mostly with old family photos and text, and produce copies for the main characters in the pix. That ranges from just one extra copy to as many as 12 in the case of the one I did of my parents and gave to everyone, including the little great grand kids. That was probably a one-off, but I plan to do books with 6 copies.

Books with 48 pages run a gamut of prices, but when there's a sale I can get a 10x12 inch book with a hard photo cover and printing on front and back page surfaces for about $42. That's 96 numbered pages. LOTS OF PHOTOS! Not a big expense for one extra copy, but for 12 copies, it adds up. What would you estimate a 24 page book would cost with your process? You can only print on one side of pages, right?

I really liked the handmade look of your books. I'd like to delve into that if I can manage to make covers. Great keepsakes.
Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Leave a Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *