My image, Knight Launcher , is an example of the kind of creative work that I enjoy most. I love combining photographs and manipulating them in Photoshop to obtain partially planned and usually unexpected results. Most often, I have absolutely no idea of what the outcome will be. . . I start playing around with images, with nothing particular in mind. However, each step in the process makes me think of some other photograph that I've stored in my computer and some weird way of using it. I find this type of "play" extremely stiumulating and it is the exact opposite of over zealous strategic planning processes that I hate!
1. Citycorp building, New York City, October 2007.
	The process began by creating a horizontal mirror image and then doubling it by copying it and flipping it vertically to create a second mirror image. I've done this before with other pictures, so no great novelty here. However, the patterns obtained are often striking and lead to other ideas.
2. Mirror images.
3. Mathematical transformation.
This is a neat transformation available in Photoshop. It converts the location of every pixel in the image from rectangular to polar coordinates. It is a mathematical process that you don't have to understand in order to use it to obtain striking effects. As soon as I'd done it, I saw what appeared to be a man's head upside down, so I rotated the image 180º and then stretched it vertically.
4. A little cropping and a "glow of power" and we have a rather menacing robot.
At first, I though that I was finished. But then, it seemed to me that the picture needed the addition of a foreground object to obtain additional depth. Being lazy, I remembered that back in 2002, I'd photo- graphed knights in New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art and had carefully cut one of them out to put on a subway platform. I found Mr. knight and scaled him to place in front of my robot to make it look as if he was riding forth from the seat of power to do mischief-- sort of like in The Lord of the Rings. Of course, you could interpret this entirely differently. The knight is really doing his chivalrous duty and protecting a large nurse's dormitory.
5. Knights at the Met.	© David Perlman/ Revised Feb 2008