I’ve been re-creating Robert Tinney’s Byte magazine paintings as photographs. My latest work is “Technological Breakthrough”.
Byte’s January 1986 issue had a focus on robotics. Mr. Tinney painted a robot claw hatching out of an egg. As I’ve done with several other Byte covers, I re-created Tinney’s vision as if it were real, and as if a photographer had been standing next to Tinney as he painted.
This was an obvious cover to re-create since Tinney had, eight months earlier, used the same claw design in a painting I had already re-created.
Or at least, so I thought. In my initial test photographs, I realized that the claw in Tinney’s Intelligent Reflections cover was much larger, in proportion to its “wrist”, than the claw in Technological Breakthrough. I had to either redesign and re-manufacture the claw, or Photoshop it. I chose to do the latter.
The ribbon cable was “posed” with stiff, aluminum craft wire. The egg was a goose egg – there are people who sell emptied, cleaned out eggs!
I wrestled with the background. I tried a continuous sheet, starting underneath the egg and bending upwards to cover the wall. But ironically, even though it was real, it looked fake. So I ended up with two different sheets.
Here’s the final result of Technological Breakthrough. And please check out my other Byte cover re-creations.
