Coin Photography Studio

It's World Book Day. There are many books celebrating coins, so it’s nice to see a coin celebrating a book. This Cuban issue commemorates the 30th anniversary of Ernest Hemingway’s Nobel Prize in Literature for his short novel “The Old Man and the Sea”. One of his most famous works, it tells the story of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Cuba. The novel was written in 1951 while Hemmingway lived in the country. It was the last major work of fiction by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime.

Seen up close, it’s hard not to think of coins as small works of art—composed, balanced, and shaped by the same principles you’d find on any canvas.

Just a different medium.

Working in metal means thinking differently about light, depth, and form. It’s less forgiving, more deliberate—and when it works, incredibly precise.

That’s what makes coin design so interesting. Not just what’s created, but how it had to be created.