When I first saw this month’s J.Crew cover I wanted to get all huffy and claim it was bald faced plagiarism. I shot the image on the left over a year ago. All the elements are there; a boat, an intimate couple, and an icy backdrop.

However, two lines of thinking from my more temperate side are throttling my indignancy. The first is J.Crew’s season appropriate attire, as opposed to my incongruent summerwear. I’d like to think that the summerwear implies an unseasonably warm temperature in that arctic setting and the casual nature of the models subtly parallels the comfort that can be found in ignoring the consequences of a global climate change. I don’t think that’s the angle J.Crew was going for. The second is that when I was planning for this shoot I was intending for it to look like a J.Crew catalogue. Less likely than my ideas having been usurped by the catalog and it’s designers, is that I’m a good study of commercial photography themes and oeuvres and did a good job of predicting them. I think for my next trick I should be use my psychic powers to reproduce next year’s Victoria Secret cover and use it to illustrate some other left wing partisan agenda of mine, like protecting women’s rights and equality in developing nations or some frippery like that.