West Texas, VI: The Horse Whisperer

Another passion of my fathers'—horses and riding. He has taught many children to ride, in an arena behind the house. Part of his various volunteer activities include working with children from the juvenile system. While they learn to ride and handle all the gear, along with the care of horses, he talks to them, or lets them talk to him, or just lets them absorb the experience and its lessons.

This is one of his ways of giving back—letting kids know his story about growing up in the Bed-Sty section of Brooklyn and being raised by a single mother who worked as a nurses' assistant (that's my grandma in the photo), how he made it out through the Navy, his education through the G.I. Bill, working days while going to night school; doing all this while being a young father raising three babies in the projects of Queens, where my family started.

He lets his life story tell the tale of his success—through hard work and application, nothing is beyond ones' reach, and that there are no limits to how high one can achieve. If you can dream it, you can do it, but telling yourself you can is the first step.

West Texas, V

I love this shot of my dad, because the mesquite seem to bend under his will. For me, it symbolizes the strong connection he feels to his land; how the landowner and all he surveys fall under his responsibility.

He takes his caretaker duties seriously. No hunting is allowed on the land without his permission, and poachers will be prosecuted. As a result of over-hunting, (since it is so popular in these rural areas) the territory is patrolled often.

Wild animals are allowed to come and go through the property, with the exception of coyotes. They are vicious predators of newborn calves, and are overpopulated in these parts.

This is his Serengeti; a land of unique beauty.

West Texas, IV

After driving down into the ranch, we parked at the ranch house to release the cattle onto the land. Now they'll be able to roam free and graze. For the moms-to-be, it's also calving season.

I was trying to capture how the wispy clouds mimicked the shape of the tree branches, and in some small way, how bright the light is there, and how blue the sky. Once you've seen the brilliance and expanse of big sky country, it's hard to forget it.

West Texas, III

Gassing up for the trip to the ranch in Lockney (population in July 2008: 1,668.). This is the closest town to my dads' house.

West Texas, II

After the cattle were branded, a trailer was attached to a pick-up for transportation to the ranch. I took this shot out the window of the passenger side. To me, this photo captures how rural it is in this part of the state, by defining the essence of the saying "down the road apiece"—when "apiece" may mean ten miles or more. You can certainly see that far because of the flatness of the landscape.

For some reason, whenever I look at these roads pics, they remind me of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."

West Texas

Land adjacent to my fathers' house. I started taking a group of pictures before he began rounding up a small herd for branding.

High Anxiety.

My publisher recently told me this is THE definitive book on this topic—the one book most highly recommended by mental health care professionals to their patients than any other.

MJF went on to say that it has sold over 1,000,000 copies for other publishers, and has already sold over 650,000 copies for us (hence the cover copy tag-line on the front cover of our edition). Not too shabby for an edition retailing for $12.98, which is actually a "posh" price point for us!

This is a refresher reprinting off our backlist because the older jacket started looking dated. The design mission was fairly simple to meet: clean, emphatic, authoritative without looking stale or stodgy, modern, crisp, stand-out through boldness of colors. We had to avoid imagery since the range of phobias and disorders covered within are too vast to be placed comfortably on a cover.

Stickin' it to "The Man".

Ah, what list of ours would be complete without a selection from Disinformation Books. A true counter-culture imprint, they consistently confront and question commonly held misperceptions propagated through various media outlets, one inaccurate factoid at a time.

They make the old punk-rocker in me sing. Off-key, naturally.

The Day You Were Born, Fall 2009 list.

Interesting in the sense that I was combating commonly held stereotypes regarding astrology books. There exists in the public consciousness a distrust (or lack of seriousness) in daily horoscopes, a belief I share in varying degrees as well. So, my mission was to try and create a classy, seemingly expert tone to the book. I did this by using actual natal charts as the background art, used by professional astrologers who use a complex system of birth times and planetary alignments, and then a horoscope icon wheel as the centerpiece, which is the more identifiable symbol for horoscopes.

The center wheel is glossy—we used what's called a "faux" spot lam process, which takes a gloss jacket and then, after creating a mask, hits the outlying areas with a matte varnish. It's cheaper than using real spot gloss. That's the real challenge of bargain books; how to replicate and compete with luxury hardcover editions with 1/4 of their budget.

"Working", by Studs Terkel.

Second in a series after our 1st Studs Turkel edition "The 'Good' War". For this edition, my challenge was to find an image evocative of the concept of work, without harkening to the specifics of race, class, ethnicity, or social strata, since the book covers an enormously diverse range of voices from professions of all types.

So, I chose the daily commute as a take-off point, something every worker has to contend with in one form or another. My hidden fun built-in for readers is the spine detail: I wanted a subconscious connection between the Communist worker symbol of the hammer and sickle.
























Another cool tie-in: Harvey Pekar wrote a graphic novel version of "Working", who I got to see speak recently at a Brooklyn comic book convention called King Con.

Recent cover designs for 2009.

My design work for MJF Books, a bargain books imprint for Barnes and Noble.