This is a mock English front and back cover (the booklet was published in Arabic and Hebrew).

I didn’t actually take this photograph. It was shot by a photographer named Finley Gustafson decades ago from the Zion Passion Play. However, the Photoshop work was extensive, because I had to turn the photograph into a long, horizontal composition. This was done by copying background characters on one side, flipping them over and doing enough alterations to make them appear as different characters on the other side!

I constructed the two front sides of a manger, but the child is in his own baby basket in the background.

Old Simeon blesses the baby Jesus in the temple. Simeon was actually an Irish Catholic priest living in Cairo. The costume was handmade. The columns in the background came from a Cairo mosque and added in later.

We searched far and wide around Jerusalem for this well. The empty ground on the right (which appeared behind the text) actually came from the Egyptian desert. The two photographs were merged together in Photoshop.

This was the background for the prophecy of Isaiah 9:6, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

This is the background for the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.  A false brick road was constructed and liberally doused with kerosene to make the flames appear in the right place. The skull was added later.

This is the image taken in the hills outside of Bethlehem for the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15.  The son is repentant as he returns to his father, but the models couldn’t stop laughing when they embraced. The solution came in covering the father’s face which was hidden from the camera.

Rather than attempt to illustrate  the traditional ark in the flood, I tried to communicate Genesis 6:7  “So the Lord said, ‘I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth…’” Obviously a lot of Photoshop work!

How do you show Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem with little or no budget?  The image from the left side came from a US stage play in the 1960’s (used with permission). I removed the microphones digitally. The young Egyptian boy on the right was pointing at nothing. The two images were merged in Photoshop.

The Only Lasting Peace was a booklet I was asked to write, design and photograph for the Bible Societies of Israel and Palestine. The basic theme was that people cannot have true peace among themselves until there is first peace with God.