Hi! So a while back, my mom found a photo album and diary that belonged to my 3xGreat Uncle, Carl Farnsworth. He was a photographer, and he had all sorts of photos; one was even of lighting, and this was back in 1910. In 1918 he enlisted in the army and was shipped off to France as a combat engineer during WWI. The diary we found was his war journal, and I am transcribing it as of now (almost done!) and I wanted to make a cover; using some of the photos Carl had taken of himself while at war. Let me know what you think, any tips and pointer welcome!!
I like it! One suggestion I would make is to reduce the spacing on the title so that the word overcoat doesn't cut into the bottom photo so much. A bit of overlap is fine but IMO right now it's too much and ruins the line of the photo.
I like it, but I find myself wondering why so much of the photo at upper left bleeds off the cover. I think I'd like to see perhaps a bit more of that one. What's the overall background image? To me, it looks like a mistake, like someone had their camera pointed up at the top of a bunch of trees when they pushed the shutter button (or lever, more likely for WW1 era). It's a war diary, so what about using a broad, overall view of some scene from the field in WW1, like maybe a panorama of a batlefield, or trenches, or something like that?
The background is supposed to be old leather since the diary itself is a small leather covered book; (The book isn't as beat up as you would think) and when it comes to the pictures, I wanted to make it look like the photos were just tossed over the book cover. But I'll try moving the photo around to make it less hidden.
Aha! Okay, now that you have explained it, I see that. Having any number of old leather pieces around here as reference, I would suggest that your background doesn't suggest that because it's too magnified. If the source photo is larger that the portion displayed on the cover, could you zoom out a bit to make the individual sections of alligatored leather a wee bit smaller ... so they look more like alligatored old leather? On second thought (and fourth or fifth look), maybe the problem isn't the zoom level but the focus. The cracks in the leather don't seem to be very clear, which is probably when I first looked at it I thought it was tree branches silhouetted against an overcast sky.
