Alberto Fernandez wrote:A beautiful image! If anything, to try and improve it you should have touched the Parthenon and not the Moon! Those cranes there take part of the beauty away--even if it´s only an infinitesimal part!!
Alberto,
The cranes and scaffolding has been in place for about ten years now due to on-going restoration project to fix the joists between the marble sections. When the Parthenon was built, wood in the form of a "+" was used to ensure a tight fit between the marble sections. With the passage of time, the wood obviously rotted and endangered the integrity of the Parthenon itself.
In the early 1900's, a restoration project involving the replacement of the wood joists to metal ones was undertaken. As you can imagine, over the next century, the metal not only began to rust but the rust itself was starting to accumulate on the marble, thus causing further damage.
About ten years ago, yet another restoration project was started for the replacement of the rusted metal joists as well as cleaning (or removal) of the rust from the marble. I may be mistaken but I think titanium is now being used to replace the metal joists and which not only does not rust but is quite strong (vis a vis no new restoration projects for the immediate future thereafter).
Unfortunately, the latest restoration project was scheduled to be complete by the summer of 2004 and the start of 2004 Athens Summer Olympic Games. Regrettably, this target was not met and in spite of the fact we have also had the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games and we are a year away from the 2012 London Summer Olympic Games.
As you can see, the restoration project is taking longer than what it took to build the Parthenon itself. Some of the delay is due to the fact that marble is used to reconstruct some of the missing pieces while the cleaning project itself using special lasers for dust removal has been extended.
It would have been very easy to remove the cranes and scaffolding digitally within Photoshop BUT then I would be opening up a huge can of worms since one can easily extrapolate that not only did I digitally fix (or modify) the Parthenon itself but I also conveniently added a full moon on top to produce the final result. Just to give you an idea, I purposely did not remove a hot pixel very close to the lunar limb (lower right quadrant) so as not to leave the slightest impression of any sort of montage.
There is no question a number of my photos involving the Parthenon and the rising Sun/Moon will have to be revisited in the future once the restoration work is complete and all of the cranes and scaffolding are removed. Here is another example which was mitigated by the restoration equipment:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090621.html (I have many other similar examples in my archives).
Anyway, my sincere thanks for the kind words in relation to the final result!
Anthony.
Parthenon Moon
