From Ugly Duckling to a Thing of Beauty!

I was on a road trip through Arizona and stopped at Arcosanti, an experimental community north of Phoenix. It’s an odd place with some concrete buildings and a few inhabitants. On the grounds was this old, rickety, intriguing truck that caught my eye. It had a peculiar glass chandelier hanging in the cab so I photographed it against the vast desert landscape. It was a cool day and not too sunny. You don’t always get the perfect weather for the shot you want. But if you have a vision for the shot, and you know you can creatively enhance the photo using digital tools, you take the shot. Working from my RAW image, I knew I could bring out the glass chandelier as well as other details and colors hidden in my original capture. I’m also very particular about skies in my images. Again, if you can pick the day and time for your shoot, or have the luxury of waiting on location for the perfect weather conditions, that’s great! But that scenario isn’t always possible when shooting commercially. Or, if you happen upon a great shot on a cloudy day like in this instance, know that you can always enhance the sky later. I will often photograph beautiful sky/cloud formations to use in my photos. I keep an archive of my sky shots. For this particular shot, the sky was not rich or complementary enough for the photo. So I enhanced the original sky by adding vibrancy and saturation to it, and then I also added one of my own skies to fill in the areas that were totally cloudy to achieve a beautiful, balanced sky that enhanced the overall image. I brightened up the desert landscape to make it appear as though the sun was actually shining down on it. I intensified the colors of the truck and lightened inside the cab to expose the glass chandelier and other details. In the end, my original photograph was transformed into a more interesting, artistic image of what I envisioned in my mind’s eye.

My original ‘photograph’ at top and my final ‘image’ at bottom.

“Arcosanti Truck” photograph featured in Phoenix Magazine / 2022.