Marty’s photo of the day #3978: For the cover of the first edition of my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents, my wife, Deb, took over two hundred photos of me with tailless whip-scorpions crawling up my face. Even though we switched covers after the first edition sold out, traveling back to the Amazon Rainforest of Peru to shoot those photos was one of the best business decisions I’ve ever made. The book ended up winning six national awards, and the whip-scorpion-on-my-face photo on the cover caught the attention of college programming boards, leading to a college speaking career that is heading into its sixteenth year.

This is one of the rejected photos from that photo shoot.