Book
This exciting sequel to Conflict at Chillicothe brought its own set of challenges. Photos of battle reenactments are never royalty free and rarely easy to legally use on a book cover. While I found several that might have worked on this cover, they all had editorial licenses, which meant I could not use them commercially. Fortunately, the author had personal contact with a reenactor, and he provided us with photos and permission to use them.
Putting a face to Joshua (the main character) on the cover was a tad more complicated. We had neither the budget nor the appropriate model to do a photo shoot, yet finding a stock image of a blond boy with the appropriate pose and expression proved impossible. I finally made use of the Dreamstime forum, and found a photographer willing to take photos of his son until he’d arrived at one that would work for me. The publisher and author complained that he looked like a girl and was too clean, so I dirtied him up in Photoshop. Unfortunately, the author’s insistence that he wear a hat had to be ignored. The hat would not have worked with the composition of the layout.