I was living in my first studio in downtown Los Angeles. I became very familiar with the downtown area and was comfortable moving in that environment. On the weekends, at that time in history, the downtown area would be a ghost town. Today it is packed with people and activity, but then, it was empty. A playground for a photographer. This photograph is of what was known then as the Crocker Bank Center. I remember there were three buildings in the complex, and this one had a very sharp corner. Using that architectural detail as a starting point and exploiting the flattening effect of photography I waited for a partly cloudy day. I knew if I placed my camera just right and involved the patchy clouds it could transform this building into a monolith and the reflections of the sky on that monolith would give it the abstraction I wanted. I think I had the theme song from “2001, A Space Odyssey” playing in my head as I framed this up. My 4×5 speed graphic camera was mounted on a tripod using positive/negative Polaroid film. Sort of the precursor to chimping on a digital camera’s back, I was able to see “almost” instantly if I was achieving what I wanted. The negative was then cleared and dried. I made a 16×20 inch print and mounted it. Since then, I’ve lost the negative but still had the print. Going through some boxes a few years ago I ran across this and knew that if I could get it into the digital world it might still have a life. My scanner certainly could not handle that size. What to do? I scanned it in pieces. With just enough overlap for each scan that eventually using the power of Photoshop’s stitching ability “It” could be put back together.