Le Dome (2017)

Le Dome is a seafood restaurant that graces a corner of Montparnasse Boulevard. My wife, Zosia and I were staying at a cute little Airbnb a couple of blocks away. Montparnasse is a beautiful boulevard amidst the hundreds of beautiful boulevards that make up the city of Paris.

Sifting through the thousands of shots from the trip, the shot in Figure 1, (top left) jumped out at me as the subject for an image of Paris. The feeling would be my inspiration -- the memories.

At the time I took the shot, painting it was not a thought. My shot shows little detail. Google Street View allowed me to revisit the spot and get a fairly good amount of the reference needed. Others required a bit more work.

Figure 2, (top right) shows the angled side of the entrance to the restaurant. Google Street View let me see that the side is made of glass and mirrors with a central area with some posters in it. This was all I needed to know. However, there have to be reflections. My shot had no detail. The Google Street View cameras are mounted on cars above eye level. What I saw reflected was the sidewalk.

Figure 3, (middle left) shows how I solved the problem. To get the proper reflections I printed an aerial view of the corner. I then printed a recurring building taken from my painting Venetian night and affixed it to some books and placed it over the aerial view along the street side.

A small mirror was taped against another box and placed over the angled wall in the aerial view. A few match boxes stood in for cars.

I placed my camera on the table over where I stood in the aerial view as seen in Figure 4, (middle right).

I then calculated how far down the street you would see. I went to that spot in Google Street View seen in Figure 5, (bottom left) and I was able to create the proper reflection as shown in Figure 6, (bottom right).