The covers of each of my travel books feature original photographs of my own with some text designed by the publisher. I thought I’d share some insights into how all three came about.

For my first book, Can’t Get Here from There: Fifty Tales of Travel, I wanted to keep it simple. We have numerous maps collected over our years of traveling, so I grabbed one as a backdrop. I wanted one that wouldn’t be too distracting or recognizable yet would still offer an interesting background. Now I needed something in the foreground.

I knew from photos I have provided as the covers of books and magazines in the past that I needed to leave space top and bottom for the title and author name. I had purchased an old compass while in Jordan that I thought would both tie into the travel motif I was after and allow the needed space top and bottom. I also decided to shoot using a lower f-stop to blur the area where the title would go.

The photo was taken using natural light with the Nikon Z6 and Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 micro lens using the FTZ mount. I used an f-stop of 5.6 to allow for some blur but not so much as to lose all definition. I could probably have moved the compass up a bit in the shot for better balance with the text, though I do like the flow of this positioning.

Below is what I submitted to the publisher (left) and the final book cover that we agreed upon (right).

Purchase select prints of mine: https://society6.com/jgtravels
Follow me on Instagram: @jg_travels