Shot of the month
Henry Reichhold explains how he made this jigsaw puzzle of a photograph
Large open spaces, and how time and light changes the way we interpret these spaces, are something I have always had a fascination with. In this image of the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, called ‘The Girl in the Yellow Dress’, time seems to be separated into sections: the gallery itself becomes the stage the crowds flow across; the highly distorted girl in the yellow dress seems strangely out of sync with all those around her; and the photographer in the bottom right-hand corner captures the scene.
The process of creating this final image started with shooting the background. This required about 10 images, which were then stitched together to create a natural looking low-distortion and high-resolution (135 megapixels) image. Using an exposure of 1/4 sec in order to capture a wide range of movement, I then took around 200 images of the people in the gallery, over a period of around an hour.
Back at the studio I repopulated the scene using around 100 layers in Photoshop. This process is a bit like completing a jigsaw puzzle with no final image to guide you – fascinating and frustrating at times, but also quite magical when the image begins to take on a personality of its own.
I have always loved the work of
Bill Brandt, and I have found much inspiration for my own photographs from his words on the subject. “Photography has no rules, it is not a sport,” he said. “It is the result which counts, no matter how it is achieved.”