Producing renderings to aid the client in the visualization of their project.

Renderings, or digital paintings, begin with a photograph supplied by the architect, designer or client. At that point I discus with the lighting designer what effect they want to show... up-lighting, down-lighting, subtle washes, shore scrapings or direct task lighting. Once this has been established, I go into Photoshop and begin to paint with light, similar to the way the designer does in real life.

These Photoshop files can become very complex... I've done some with as many as 40 to 50 layers. As an example, see the bit of the layer menu (fig1) from a recent rendering. In my opinion; what really brings the picture to life are the subtleties in the masking and control layers.

Enough of this... let's let the art do the talking. The first example, below, shows the original photo on top and the three proceeding renderings show the amount of the area of trees, behind the lake, that may be lit and what they will look like. This way of showing the client choices can be very helpful In the case of this project, once the client saw all of the choices... they picked the bottom one.

After perusing this example mentioned above and the layer menu example (Fig.1), look below them to find the link to see more examples. In most cases, I've positioned the daylight shot first, followed by my night rendering. Enjoy.