By Carly Glasmyre Haas
With almost every book published at Fox Chapel Publishing, the editorial and design teams get to dream up and photograph a cover. Mindy Kinsey and I had a lot of fun shooting the cover for Tom Hindes’s new book 20-Minute Whittling Projects.
After brainstorming with our publisher and the design team, we decided to try shooting someone kicking back and whittling on his porch on a lazy summer day. We imagined a shot over the model’s shoulder (who was none other than our beloved art director, Jon Deck!).
This was our first attempt at the cover. We couldn’t get the “over the shoulder” angle to our liking, so we focused on photographing the hands against a great background. However, as you can see here, the hands look huge, and the whittled piece looks quite small.
To remedy this, Mindy asked Tom to whittle a few extra large pieces. We attempted the over-the-shoulder angle again, but it still wasn’t exactly what we wanted. We wanted to make sure the piece was the center of attention, not the model.
Finally, we decided to refocus on just the hands and the project against the porch, and came up with this cover! This felt like just the right mix of everything—the background was perfect, we captured the act of whittling, and the whittled piece was the center of attention.
20-Minute Whittling Projects will be available in April 2016 for $12.99 plus $3.99 S&H from Fox Chapel Publishing, 1970 Broad St., East Petersburg, PA 17520, 800-457-9112, www.foxchapelpublishing.com.
