Hazmat: Hut

For several years I volunteered as Photo Editor for a small-press poetry magazine called the HazMat Literary Review -- HazMat for short. The name stands for "Hazardous Material," and bespeaks Editor-in-Chief Norm Davis' poetic proclivities.

What do Photo Editors do? Well, the short answer is they select photos and prepare them for publication. You know -- pick and choose editorially suitable images, collaborate with layout, crop, and then make sure color and tonal ranges match standard web-offset press capabilities -- that kind of thing.

One day while sifting through submissions, Gerald Wheeler's photo of a little greenhouse in Katy, Texas (right) caught my eye. A bit further back in my head, something about "People who live in glass houses..." began to rattle. Hmmm...

Since I knew Norm was a "stone thrower" as a matter of editorial policy, I contacted the photographer and got Gerry’s permission to “do whatever.” Then I took his original straightforward shot and transformed it via Adobe Photoshop into an explosive grayscale statement for the cover of HazMat volume 6, issue 2 (left).

Everybody liked the result. This cover was later featured in the writeup on HazMat printed in the 2005 edition of Poets Market.

Y'know -- there's just something about seeing the potential of an image and making it happen that really appeals to me.