Before-and-after

This image is a photo illustration. Move your mouse onto and off of it to see a direct "before-and-after" comparison with the original photograph. This shows how I can compensate for less-than-ideal conditions at the time of a site visit, through the use of various digital techniques. In this instance, my goal was to tell a story about the recently-renovated formal gardens surrounding the Italianate villa that is now a museum of art. Because of the important role of nature in this assignment, I wanted sunlight, clouds, vegetation, water, and the building itself to play together in harmony. To develop the final image, I had to combine several exposures taken over a period of half an hour, in order to capture the correct exposure in the highlights on the building and in the deep shadows in the trees and water. I then created a complex mask around the building and trees -- both in the upper part of the image and in the reflection in the water -- and dropped in a more pleasing sky (also my photograph). In putting the sky into the area of the reflection, I accounted for perspective of the building relative to the clouds and made the reflected sky slightly darker, to account for the fact that water absorbs some of the light. My eye for creating a convincing photo illustration is informed by my many years of photographing nature.

Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma

Client: Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma & Studio Blue, Chicago