My first zine - Adam Ramjean
It’s great to see my students producing their first zines or books and I was really pleased to see this one by Adam Ramjean (@checkmybadself). I know that Adam has been working hard at his street photography in recent years and Carnival was shot over several visits to London’s vibrant Notting Hill Carnival. I asked Adam to tell us about his experience of shooting and producing Carnival . . .
What is the project about?
This project is my personal take on Notting Hill Carnival; less about the parade and more about the vibrant shenanigans unfolding in the side streets. Although I've been attending the Carnival for years, I've only been documenting it since 2022. This period also marks the return of the Carnival after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, which may have made capturing these moments even more meaningful, as a way to reconnect with something I deeply missed during that time.
Where did the idea come from?
I am shooting a wider project of events in London (there are many!) but I felt like I had a strong enough body of work from Notting Hill Carnival that it could stand on it's own. I'll probably include some images from Carnival in the broader as-of-yet-unnamed project but perhaps only two or three.
What was your experience of shooting the images?
Shooting Carnival is always a struggle between shooting vs. partying. The sounds of the music, the smell of the jerk and the taste of the rum punches have a strong pull! I guess the other way of looking at it is that you can't really lose. You can just dip your toes into each side as the mood carries you.
What gear did you use?
I actually recently looked at the metadata and of the 30 images in the zine, 20 were taken with a Ricoh GR3 and 10 were on the Fujifilm X100F.
How did you decide on the format, paper stock etc?
This was a big question! I printed out a few different options and I was tied between silk and uncoated (at Mixam). The colours were a bit more vibrant in silk but I just love the look and feel of uncoated, perhaps it's more like the stock I was used to seeing in other books/zines - so uncoated it was. The final question was the GSM and after a few tests, I landed on 150 gsm for the pages and 250 gsm for the cover.
How did you design and print the zine?
I used Mixam's online (free!) publishing. It's a bit of a pain to use, but I found the cost of InDesign at £25/month way too expensive. I know there are other ones around like Affinity [see below] but something to investigate more next time
What difficulties did you encounter in doing this?
I would say the biggest challenge was printing. One thing I learned was that Mixam are more of a middle man, they send your work to other printers (or production centres as they call them) rather than doing the printing themselves. I had printed 4 or 5 test prints in the lead up to my final print and when I got to that stage, they switched the printers and the prints that arrived were not great at all. I'm currently asking for a refund for that order but my learning is if I'm to use Mixam again, to request they use the same printer the whole way through (they did this for me on the final-final print).
What advice would you give to others who are considering creating their first zine?
Be open minded and run zine ideas (which images to use, sequencing, pairing...) past some other people whose opinion you value. I can't overstate how important this was to Carnival. I also had a friend launching at exactly the same time as me with his zine and we were back and forth all the time about our zines with each other. A great and fulfilling experience - much more satisfying than posting on Instagram.
Where can people buy a copy?
I still have copies here: https://adamramjean.bigcartel.com/
Also my website: www.adamramjean.com and my Instagram: @checkmybadself
