alex_beecroft | Cover art hair tearing

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Cover art hair tearing

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?

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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.

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!)

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.

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!

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