Companion piece to Guggenheim Shadows 1, this was shot in the same area of the Guggenheim in Bilbao. See below for a little bit of discussion on the evolution of this print.

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This—which I consider to be the final version of the print—is actually the third state of this particular image.

The first state was just a straight rendering of the scene as captured by the camera, with no editing. The blue-green cast of the museum walls was more pronounced and the shadow areas were more grey.

For the second state, I dialed up the contrast on the whole image and desaturated the colors to an almost pure greyscale. In fact, on first glance, it might look like a monochromic image, but you can actually see a fair amount of shading in the fuzzier lefthand portion of the print (representing a different wall surface in the scene than the crisper righthand side). It turns out that this version has stood out to almost everyone who has seen it in real life (I have a framed proof). But, to me, the loss of detail, especially in the white areas on the right side of the image, and the eradication of the original hues prevent it from being the best companion piece to its partner. Sorry, folks, artist’s prerogative (though some special few may be able to talk me into producing prints of this second state in place of the final version).

Incidentally, for a true monochromatic version of this image (actually, several versions), see the Monochrome Sandbox page.

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