It's always tough photographing a thought or idea if the final product has no physical presence. You can maybe shoot the by-product of the concept or the person working on the project, but sometimes it just will not prove to be an interesting image. This is a photo shot for the most recent RESULTS magazine about Dr. Mansoor Haider using "mathematical models to study how cartilage cells respond to different stresses and strains." After I got the old meat & potatoes photo, I decided to just shoot a clean head shot, with the idea in the back of my mind that I could do a "Beautiful Mind" treatment in Photoshop. I also shot Mansoor's monitor screen that showed the equation he constructed. I turned the yellow and blue words into black and white, making on template layer of the equation. From there I made multiple copies of the layered file, making some larger and some smaller to give the letters a sense of scale and distance from Mansoor's head. Of course, I needed to make each layer grow more and more out of focus as they "floated" further away from the main subject. The final effect was a look of Mansoor being surrounded by deep thought.
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