The Cover

The cover artwork had quite a unique evolution.

Credits for the cover artwork go to Diane Hammerling and Russell Lepp. 

The Final Product

Diane is a friend of my wife and a very talented photographer. I had asked her to do the headshots for the back cover of the book.  Being the artistic person that she is I began asking her about the cover art and some different ideas that I had. We had discussed a few ideas and decided to just snap some pictures and see what we could come up with.

The idea behind the cover came from a collage concept that had been rolling around in my head. During a writing workshop that I had attended the facilitator had us do an exercise. She brought in an entire collection of various objects, knick-knacks, and collectibles that had obviously been brought from home. There were numerous objects varying from the benign to the bizarre.  There was a Santa Claus figurine, a gorilla toy, a snowglobe - just about everything imaginable.  The purpose of the exercise was to pick several items that could be used as a metaphor to tell your story.  The gorilla could represent the proverbial "800 lb gorilla" or it could represent "the monkey on your back."  It was a fun exercise and it created an image that you could use to tell your story in a way you might not have thought of.

With this in mind - I grabbed a few items from our home and went to the photoshoot to see if we could come up with the artwork for the book cover.

The photo that eventually became the cover of the book is a series of objects that tell our story. The two hearts which are the main feature represent our two children.  The heart picture was actually an art project that my son did for Valentine's Day in grade 2.  So Russell gets credit for the main artwork.  The two rings - are our wedding bands and they obviously represent my wife and me. My only regret in the end product is that in the photo we had an EKG tracing placed as a background.  To represent the congenital heart disease which plays a central part in our story. When the filters were applied it almost completely disappeared. It's too bad, but it provided a different texture to the photo.  One friend described it as having a fragile look to it. Showing the fragility of life. Because the tracing can only be barely distinguishable it might make you wonder what it actually is - something mysterious and unknown.  

The Original Cover Photo

    This is what the original photograph looked like - unedited.  Quite literally we threw a few things on a concrete floor and added and removed things - took a few different angles to see what we could come up with.  To be honest, when we finished the shoot I wasn't sure if what we had was any good.

Then Diane did her photo editing magic. In previous discussions about cover ideas, we had looked at some other book covers and other art that I liked. One of the art pieces that I had sent to Diane was a watercolour painting of a heart that was quite compelling to me.  With the inspiration of the watercolour, Diane used several filters including a watercolour filter to transform the photo.  With the end product being what you see on my book cover.

The funny part of this whole process was that at the outset I thought I would just use a stock photo - nothing fancy and that would be good enough. In learning about the publishing process I learned how important the cover is and why I decided to get more involved with developing a cover I'm truly happy with.

So special thanks to Diane and Russell for their contributions to this cover. I think it's pretty cool!

For more of Diane’s work, check out her most recent images! 

Beautiful Beginning Photography or follow her on Instagram @diane_bbphoto