Confession time. We have a crush on the covers for Hush, Hush and Crescendo.
I guess this shouldn’t come as such a surprise, because (1) who doesn’t love those covers and (2) I’m pretty sure we’ve gushed about them already. Repeatedly. And drooled over the early alternate covers, too.
So today, we wanted to get the inside scoop from the photographer and find out more about the general process for creating the final image. Naturally, we turned to the fine folks at Fallen Archangel (the official fan site for the series) for more:
Hush, Hush Cover: James Porto, Photographer
James Porto is an incredibly talented photographer, and chances are you’ve seen his work elsewhere than just the covers of Hush, Hush and Crescendo. Just take a peek at his portfolios on his website for an idea of his work — which includes some other, amazing photography of winged women, very evocative of the Hush, Hush cover. In fact, Porto tells Fallen Archangel that his “winged women” series helped catch the eye of the folks at Simon & Schuster when they were planning the book cover:
Lucy Cummins, Senior Art Director at Simon and Schuster saw one of my photographs, a romantic image of a couple on the subway, and went to my site. She saw some of the winged figures there and decided to commission me for the cover.
James also tells FA about how the general design/feel of the cover came about:
It was an image that started to emerge in the first chapter and grew as I got into the story. I had several other ideas that came from specific passages but this more general, evocative composition felt the most substantial.
[…]
Well, a little background on my interest in this type of imagery; I’ve been working on a series of b/w nude female winged figures for 15 years (see image above). The image for the cover is only the second male figure I’ve done but the mood and intensity is similar to the ongoing series of winged women. The first thing I did was choose background skies and a light source and light direction. Once that was established, it was easy to light the model and make him appear as though he lived in the cover environment.
See more of this interview at FallenArchangel.com! You can also check out more with Drew Doyon, the cover model who portrayed “Patch” and read an interview with Samantha Ruggiero, the “Nora” model from the cover of Crescendo. Oh, and did you see their outtake from the cover shoot:
For the comments: Which cover is your favorite? Why?
Novel Novice 