| The magazine had scored a coup: an exclusive account by the first American woman to live in the Russian space station. Out of hundreds of digital pictures Shannon Lucid had taken during the mission, they could not find one that seemed perfect for the cover. When the editors gave me the assignment, I decided to take a straightforward literal approach and simply put her in the space station. I searched through dozens of official NASA portraits and found one that had the sort of harsh lighting that would work for this scene. In Photoshop, I repainted it, softening it to reflect the fill light from the earth. I rendered her hair to look like it was floating in zero gee, then added a layer to hold the reflection of the earth in the window. The image of Mir came from another mission, but had to be painstakingly embellished to restore lost detail. The picture elicited a number of letters from readers protesting the "faked" image, but the editors pointed out that it had been clearly labeled as a painting in the credit line. |
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