I didn’t set out to make this image when I shot my brackets but once I was back in my studio at my computer the possibility of doing it came to me. I really liked the way the copper and stainless steel glowed under the industrial lights at Vendome Copper and Brass Works manufacturing facility here in Louisville. I thought the copper stills had characteristics that suggested that they were alien beings and I went with that idea. After merging the two versions I began to see various patterns in the image that further reinforced the concept.

The composition is symmetrical, something I usually avoid, but in this case it really works to give a sense of depth to the image. The composition also showcases the objects within the image and gives them new meanings. I especially like the many patterns that are formed in the space from the textures on the floor to the very back of the image.

The original image is another five exposure bracket set that was first merged in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and then using the Realistic (Deep) setting I did my final tone mapping. I tried to not go too far in my tone mapping in order to retain a sense of reality in the colors and textures within the scene.

I saved the resulting image back to Aperture 3 before exporting it to Photoshop CS5 where I duplicated it as a mirror image. I created this image by flipping my original shot side to side in Photoshop CS5; this left me with two images that I then merged into one image using Photoshop CS5.