One of my most difficult photo assignments was photographing the interior of the Mesa Temple Visitors' Center, particularly the Christus statue. The Visitors' Center (VC) had been completely remodeled and the Missionary Dept. wanted photographs for a new brochure and small rack cards. After making arrangements, my friend Paul Allen and I hauled all of my equipment into the VC after closing and had the security guard lock us in for the night. I knew it would be a long, labor-intensive job, so we needed to be there after regular hours.
     I had been to the VC dozens of times and was excited to photograph the Christus statue with its new background. I had scouted it only briefly and thought it would be easy enough to shoot with only a few supplemental lights. The human eye and brain have incredible abilities in compensating for wide ranges of contrast and color, "averaging" out scenes that can be difficult or impossible to capture on film or with a digital sensor.
     Without the benefit of the broad, front-light from the VC entrance, the lighting on the statue is very contrasty. The top of the statue is only four feet or so from the closest light, while the base of the statue is another 12 feet away. Due to the rapid fall-off of light, the base of the statue gets only about 1/16th the intensity of the light on the head. The human brain is also used to seeing most things lit with light sources from above; like sunlight or room lights. Supplemental lighting has to be carefully placed or you run the risk of making a subject like the statue look unnatural. I wanted it to look completely natural and not draw anyone's attention away from the image of the Savior.
     One full night of hard work, shooting lots of film, resulted in lots of unsatisfactory images. My friend Jared Rogers convinced me that shooting digitally was the way to go. He loaned me his digital camera and I spent another night, this time alone, and got what I needed. Jared is also my Photoshop guru and spent several hours helping me figure out how to spend many more hours making the image look its best.  In addition to evening out the range of contrast in the scene, I had to adjust for the two different colors of light used in the display. Photoshop is an excellent tool, but is very labor-intensive, especially for a digital novice.
     Photographing all night is exhausting, but I enjoyed the unique opportunity to spend time creating images of such a well-known representation of the Savior.