Cover art hair tearing

[alex_beecroft]

Maybe it’s a case of ‘separated by a common language’ again, but how hard can it be to find a single decent picture of an Oxbridge young man in summer flannels (preferably lounging against a wall)?

I’m looking for something like this:

And I’ve tried Brideshead Revisited (as a sort of theme), Maurice (theme), EM Forster, Oxbridge punting, Oxbridge boating, 1930s style, flannel trousers, garden party, Ascot, Edwardian gentlemen, elegant men, themed weddings and even three men in a boat. And I’m getting pictures of gardens, ties, men in business suits and high tech yachts. Searching for ‘men in punts’ just gets me a do you mean ‘men in pants’?

So maybe I’m using the wrong terms. Anyone got any suggestions?

.

Comments

[commodorified]

Third pic down on this page?

[alex_beecroft]

Oh, that's gorgeous! Not quite what I'm looking for for this cover (as the book's an anthology and this picture really ought to stand on its own), but definitely one to bookmark for later. Thank you!

[commodorified]

This is not a gentleman, but it's v. pretty:

http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/thumbnail/120613/1/Two-Ladies-Punting-On-The-River.jpg

I found those using "punting" and then flipping through.

[alex_beecroft]

It is very pretty indeed. Quite iconable, I think :) Thanks!

[ex_gryphon136]

"Dorothy L Sayers Mysteries", "Gaudy Night" starring Edward Petherbridge & Harriet Walter.

The Beeb did the three "Peter & Harriet" stories from the Lord Peter Wimsey books in 2002. "Gaudy Night" is set in Oxford before WWII. It must have a young man lounging in flannels in it somewhere.

I tried to pop my copy in and find one to 'cap for you, but my DVD drive insists the disk I just put in there isn't there. (stupid machine!)

[alex_beecroft]

Ah no, the trouble is that I want it for a book cover, so it has to be either available to license for commercial use, or copyright free. It's so frustrating that all the good photos are unavailable!

Re: Cover art hair tearing

[piranha]

you need to find an image which you can license? or as a reference for a cover painting? or?

Re: Cover art hair tearing

[alex_beecroft]

Yes, licensed for commercial uses (and preferably under a tenner in price.) It's for the cover of a book coming out from Cheyenne Publishers in October.

Re: Cover art hair tearing

[piranha]

ok; i'll check the microstock sites i know; though i expect it'll be difficult to find. :)

Re: Cover art hair tearing

[alex_beecroft]

Oh, you star! Thank you! And yes, I thought this would be an easy thing to find pictures of, but it's turning out to be an absolute impossibility. Thank you very much!

Re: Cover art hair tearing

[piranha]

it's hard because modern stock usually doesn't feature older stuff, unless it qualifies as "retro", and unfortunately two men lounging in the 1930s don't count.

if one could find a modern picture and run it through a bit of photoshop to make it look more like a painting, would that work? is the image supposed to be the entirety of the cover, or will there be a cover artist to do some magic?

also, the cost. two big sites i know are right out, because for the license you need (reproductive), they're way to expensive. are you expecting to sell more than 250,000 copies? if not, then two other sites would work.

i think your best bet might be to hit a library and look for paintings of that time, painters who specialized in those kinds of idyllic scenes. most of those would be out of copyright by now. bring your digicam. :)

Re: Cover art hair tearing

[alex_beecroft]

No, that's right (about modern stock having very little historical stuff). I've been looking for modern pictures that might do as well, and so far have only found two, neither of which are particularly promising. There will be a cover artist (me) and I'm OK with doing a little bit of photoshopping (getting rid of watches and designer stubble, for example).

But yes, my main problem is that I'm operating on a very tight budget. I get $50 for the final artwork, and the price of the photos comes out of that. I'm not expecting to sell that many copies, so I'm OK for using photos from somewhere like Shutterstock or iStock. But I've already scoured them until I'm at my wit's end :)

I do like the idea of hitting the library, though! Thank you. That might work!

Re: Cover art hair tearing

[piranha]

yeah, i looked through flickr, fotolia, istock, shutterstock, stockxpert, wikimedia, and no luck in finding anything that's even remotely like that image you put up. the quality of actual old images is also just too bad. there's a fair bit on punting and riverside picnics, but nothing has two men (or even just one) close together. edwardian is mostly very stiff studio portraits (though i found a lovely one of two guys in suits that even has a little life).

found some nice homoerotic subtext though, *snicker*; pictures of 3 hearty army men in undershirts and breeches, and another lot of 5 picnicking with dog; looking all _very_ bushy-tailed. also found a few nice ones when i just casually looked for "gay couple". oh, and if you ever need a muscular, naked, male torso? easy peasy.

there's a painting by maxfield parrish that has two people on a hilltop that has a similar mood to your image. the people are girls, i think, but it could be a little doctored; it looks like they're wearing pants. it dates from the late 20s/early 30s so it should be out of copyright.

i wish i had still access to a theatre; the wardrobe and a couple actor friends would do it. do you have any actor friends? they might do it just for a copy of the picture for their portfolios. or maybe a home-cooked dinner.

send me an email address for me to mail the ones i found? (i have notes for where i got them from if you decide on one of them). you can mail me at piranha@gooroos.com.

Re: Cover art hair tearing

[alex_beecroft]

Oh, wow! I'm sorry to have put you to so much work, but yes, it's amazing that despite repeated scouring there just is nothing out there.

I don't have any young male friends at all. All my male friends are over 40 and stout, so they don't stand in well for svelte young things :)

Thank you so much for looking up all this stuff! My email address is alex@alexbeecroft.com, and I'll be fascinated to see what you've found. If it doesn't come in handy now, I'm sure it will, sometime in the future :D

Thank you!

Re: Cover art hair tearing

[piranha]

you didn't put me to any work; i decided to look, and then i was determined not to give up right away, *heh*, because my "google-fu" was on the line. it was fun.

the best keyword for finding stuff that has sort of the right mood, even if modern, turns out to be "picnic". "vintage picnic" brought even up some old stuff, but really, i think it's mostly unusable (even if you were to hand-colour it). generally everything i found will need p'shop work to make it look semi-period, and the parrish painting would need to make the girls look a bit more manly. but you can crib from "brideshead revisited" as long as you don't use much.

it didn't occur to me until later that "fishing" might find some nice buddy pictures.

oh, i forgot to ask, is this just for ebook publication, or also for print? the resolution you need depends on that. if just for ebook, you can get stock cheaper, and could use more flickr images to remix.

Re: Cover art hair tearing

[alex_beecroft]

Oh, why didn't I think of picnic? I can see why that would work :)

I'm in the UK, so my knowledge of USA copyright law is a bit sketchy. Do you know what the copyright status of a picture would be if I created (say) a cartoon out of that screen cap? Would that be transformative enough to make it my copyright rather than the film maker's? I don't know where to look to find out.

This is for print and ebook publication, so yes, it does need to be high resolution, or capable of being made so without too much loss of quality. (It's asking for the moon really!)

Re: Cover art hair tearing

[piranha]

copyright is complicated, and i am not an expert, just an interested amateur. here is what i understand about reference images, and i am pretty certain this is correct (i looked into this in detail when i started to make collages):

if you just trace the image in some manner, whether by hand or with software, it remains the original artist's. even if you freehand recreate it, if it looks basically the same (except you simplified it), it remains the original artists; those are all too derivative. basically, as long as one can put your copy next to the original and say "yup, B is based on A", you're in danger of violating copyright. oh, and the thing people seem to believe about changing 10% and it's yours? uh hn. it's more like, you can safely use 10%. and even that depends on whether it's a substantial part of the image. nobody cares if you do that for a journal userpic, but since you're planning to sell books, i would be extra careful.

that said, i'm fairly certain nobody will ever twig to it if you took the guy who's lying down, flipped him around, paste a different tree, paste another guy in, in another position. heck, use a whole different background; i think that would be safe. change his hair a bit, change the colour of his shirt or pants a bit. run a painterly p'shop effect or two over it.

in any case, it'd all be substantial photoshop work. and if that's the highest resolution you have, upsampling to what you need will be impossible anyway (i have software for that and can try it just to see -- what resolution and size do you need?).

maybe it'd be better to look at images of picnics, for example, and think whether you can imagine your characters in another pose. it'd be relatively easy IMO to make a modern image look more old-fashioned if historical accuracy of clothing isn't a big deal. with your budget, it might have to fall by the wayside.

Re: Cover art hair tearing

[alex_beecroft]

That does sound as though it would all be too much trouble, and yet still leave me on dodgy ground as far as copyright goes. I'll abandon that idea then. Particularly as yes, I only have the small picture, which would really not do in 300dpi.

I found a lovely picture on Flickr yesterday which I was sure was the one, licensed for Creative Commons use, but checking up on where he got it from revealed that he had no right to license it and the original cost $400. It's a nightmare!

I went into Cambridge at the weekend and took some photos of punters, so perhaps I can make something of those. Nil desperandum! I'm sure I'll come up with something, even if it's one of those ubiquitous naked torso pictures :) But I'll check out picnics first. Thanks!