Stillwater Center (MRDD), Dayton, Ohio

Clients: Brown & Bills Architects, Inc., Dayton, OH and NBBJ, Columbus, OH

This extended facility, composed of several buildings, presented a particular photographic challenge: how to give an overall impression of its scale, while illustrating the richness and warmth of the materials, colors and details. If I had backed off far enough to show it in its entirety in one shot, many of the details would have been invisible; if I moved in closer, I wouldn't have been able to show the overall scale. The answer was to come in fairly close to one of the buildings, while panning across the scene to capture views from several angles, then stitch the images together digitally, afterward. Also, on the day I was on site, the sky was very uninteresting, so I put in a different sky, with appealing clouds, from my collection of sky photos, which I maintain just for this purpose. Finally, the grassy areas were mostly stones, dirt and weeds, so I added grass from my archive of supplemental images. The goal was to create an image that looks realistic and tells the story.