Just prior to Click I had taken a photograph at Hobby airport as I was leaving from a management meeting-three tower cranes (fixed cranes in the air, used more in Europe and just gaining acceptance in the US) building Southwest’s new terminal next to the runways. I would have expected conventional cranes that could be lowered when not in use given the runways. Anyway, I was talking to Beth, about to board, and saw this image across the terminal with light hitting the cranes. Ran over with the Df and 18-35 and took a few, then had to board. Not a lot of time but I got an image.

The result was #1 attached. Big problem with reflection (my polarizer was in checked baggage – for the last time) and I had tried to remove it without much luck in Photoshop.

So then I spent the weekend in NYC at Click and I realized that a number of things you mentioned on Sunday either I hadn’t tried or hadn’t been aware of. So Monday I went back to the image and applied what I had learned. Mon. afternoon I submitted it to my editor friend (MLP lesson applied – make friends with editors) at American Crane and Transport. (Image #2)

She emailed my about ½ hour later, saying “how did you know they were doing a “Tower Crane” issue in August, we will definitely use it and by chance did I have a vertical? Of course I didn’t (another lesson). But I cropped it down to two cranes and the jet, rather than say no. Then I found I was short about 1 ½ inches of sky to fit their cover dimensions – IF she was thinking cover. So I used content aware fill and added more sky so the dimensions equaled their cover dimensions. I then sent it (Image 3) back to her with full disclosure that the top part of the image was photoshopped and as I had guessed, since their masthead goes across the top ¼ of the image she wasn’t concerned. She then emailed me back the next day and said I was in contention for the Aug. cover. So Click to Click ends Sunday and I am in the running for a cover 3 days later.

Last Friday, I got another email from her with a mockup of the cover using that image. The attached #4 is their two mockups of the cover and they will probably go with the first according to her. The magazine isn’t published yet so she sent these to me in confidence.

So, it wasn’t a perfect image. Shot from inside a terminal, limited flexibility in lining everything up, etc. But I knew it was a different approach to using cranes and would be interesting to crane people, knew someplace that would use it, so it was worth trying to salvage and I used a lot of what we had discussed Sun to get there.