Critique - Restaurant Issue Cover

If you go here: http://flickr.com/photos/mmmappingdesign

you can see all the different background styles I played with for the restaurant issue cover. In the end, I'm glad I decided to keep the background in. While the solid color backgrounds had a clean, crisp appearance, the context of the background gives the photo a elegant, relaxed mood. The back cover was kind of a last-minute addition to the book. You can see the different arrangments that I played with for the back cover photos, as well. In case you were wondering, the food on the fork is peanut butter. It was late at night and I didn't know how to make my fork look like someone had used it, so peanut butter is the first thing I though of. Katherine Reeds comment in the critique about the photo illustration being staged is an interesting point. This may be more of an issue, because as we saw at Meredith, the photo studio has more props than a theater to help them present their photos.