Cover Design for 'Over the Western Front'

The next book to be published is nearing completion and I have taken time out to design the cover image. I have taken one of the aerial photographs taken by a 6 Squadron pilot over St Eloi three days before the allied attack at Messines (4th June 1917) as a background image which extends from the front to the rear cover. This photo has been kept in its original sepia tone and shows the utter devastation of the region even before the mines were exploded beneath the Messines ridge, as well as some of the St Eloi craters that were crteated one year earlier during the Battle of St Eloi. I have overlaid this background image with a picture of 6 Squadron's RE8, Serial No: A3675, taken of a model I made for the main image on my website some years ago. To make the overall picture more realistic, I bought a plastic airmen kit of the same scale (1:32) from a modelling company in the Ukraine and modified two of the men to make the pilot and observer. Apart from overlaying the RE8 on top of the background, no photoshopping was necessary, as I wanted the reader to see the true picture of what the ground troops had to put up with on the ground. The zig-zag lines are sections of trenches, though I cannot say whether they were allied or German trenches.