It’s all about the cover art.
I’ve bought bottles of wine because I loved the label. I’ve purchased books because my eye was drawn to the image on the front. My husband and I once bought a CD in a music store because we suspected the cover photograph was taken by one of my college roommates. We’d never heard of the band but it shared a name with an inner city neighborhood in our home town, and the photo drew us in. We’ve been forever grateful because the music of Over the Rhine has been a constant on our playlists ever since.
I have a degree in Fine Arts with an emphasis on photography. During my senior year I lived in a warehouse in Kentucky, right on the edge of the Ohio River. There were five of us living there, all art students and all photographers. I was sound asleep one night when the rest of them came home and decided to have a photo session. We weren’t a band but the idea was that we going to make an album cover. Or, at least that’s how I remember these pictures coming about.
We had attitude and apparently it was all we needed.
In reality, this is what we were really all about.
And in reality, all these years later….one of us really does make cover art.
He still shoots film, he still develops prints in a darkroom, he still works with fixer, and he makes amazingly beautiful silver gelatin prints.
To see Michael’s Wilson’s cover art please spend some time on his website. Many of the musicians he photographs will be familiar to you and I suspect you’ll fall in love with his images.
I suppose every photographer would like to be published. I post an image on Instagram each day, my attempt at making myself more aware of the spaces I move through, but my goal is to open other people’s eyes to the worlds they occupy. I simply want them to realize that any given moment might contain some beauty, or a bit of wonder. I print my images and give them out randomly, hoping to bring a moment that I’ve captured into the recipient’s sphere of recognition. Each print includes the date it was taken and where. I also really enjoy the dialog the images open up with people I might otherwise pass by.
Ah, but a book could reach so many more lives.
This would be my cover.
And this would be the back of the book.
Cover art comes in many forms, click to see how other bloggers met this challenge.
My Instagrams reside at A Pause, A Click, A Frozen Moment. They’d love it if you came by to see them!
