How a picture develops

Occasionally, I like to write about why I take certain images and what attracts me to them. A case in point was a walk that I was taking around St Louis in Missouri. I was there on the Viking Mississippi river cruise from Minnesota to Lousiana, and in St Louis, the included tour was a visit to the museum telling the story of the building of the famous arch in St Louis, and a trip up the small railway that goes inside the arch to the viewing gallery at the top. For some reason, our guide on the coach to the arch seemed to be doing everything in her power to dissuade us from making the trip up the arch. I think there had been issues in obtaining sufficient tickets for the passengers and it was pretty crowded when we arrived at the museum with airport type security to navigate. I decided that a walk around the city on this lovely afternoon was a better option – maybe wrong, but that is what I did!

The old Courthouse is a dominating building in the city:

I planned to have a number of photos of the famous building, but when I arrived, it was closed, and the windows were boarded up for modernizing and restoration. Not great in photos!

My eyes are always scanning for interesting perspectives, especially in a city when it can be so difficult to find something that is more than just a “snapshot.” Standing in front of the Courthouse, I noticed a reflection of the dome in an adjacent mirror glass skyscraper and my first thought was to somehow just capture the dome reflecting in this strange uneven way:

It was then that I saw the very complex shapes from the building that was behind me (and the courthouse) that I think is known as One Metropolitan Square. The building itself is already quite ornate and detailed and these small windows which were not completely flat gave it a far more interesting look. I decided to capture as much of it as I could in a photo and then work on it when I got home:

My camera already takes highly detailed pictures, but a recent development by Adobe allows you to double the size of the file with a new AI-driven technique and maintain all the detail. Then, I wanted it to appear as though I was looking straight on at the reflection – impossible in practice, but I wanted all the lines of the windows to be horizontal and vertical so that a print of it would look like a fantastic abstract image. So a bit more Photoshop work, gave me this perspective-corrected image:

I also created this as a jigsaw puzzle, thinking it would be incredibly interesting to try to put it together and already, one of my followers has bought a 1500-piece version for a friend for Christmas. I’ll be very interested to hear how difficult it was in practice!

The jigsaw versions can be found here as Pictorem, with free shipping, and here at Fine Art America with shipping normally an extra charge. I have a 15% discount code for Pictorem – try “SPECIALSALE” when ordering, although there is a special 20% discount code for Black Friday – BLACK20.