Neil's calendars: Underwater California

I take lots of pictures underwater, a place most people never visit. One of the advantages of that is that my pictures make perfect gifts for people - they're unique gifts that are a part of me and people tend to like them. Most of the greeting cards I've sent in the last 20 years have been underwater shots, for example.

Round about 2001 I started making calendars of underwater shots and those were well received, so I continued. To begin with, I got blank calendars from Photographer's Edge and manually attached 13 prints - one for the cover and one for each month. It was a lot of work but well worthwhile. The calendars were quite small, enough for a 4"x6" print, but that proved to be their strength - wallet of briefcase sized, they were easy to tote around. I still use blank card stock from them for one off greeting cards - they're a good company.

Then one day I discovered the joys (and frustrations) of digital printing. I use a company called Instant Publisher to publish my calendars. I create them in Word, convert them to a PDF, upload them, and receive a big box of calendars in 4-6 weeks. It's quite economical, costing less than the blank calendars I used to get from Photographer's Edge.

The calendars are 5.5" x 8.5" and come with a wire binder so they stay flat. Since I'm just using Word, I type out the daily grid for each month by hand. I also adjust the depth of each row depending on whether there are 4, 5, or 6 rows for a month (I decided that each day of the month has its own square - no sharing).

I've included the last few years worth of calendars below as PDFs, which will open in a separate window or tab. Each calendar is in three parts: the front cover, the main calendar body, and the rear cover.

2012 Calendar

2011 Calendar

2010 Calendar

2009 Calendar

2008 Calendar