This homage to the "Beat" literature began with a photo of City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, the landmark publisher and bookstore of the Beat Era. I noticed that the building itself resembled a book or perhaps a bookend and from that the idea of the final image was conceived.

An additional five photographs were prepared and assembled. They include: a short stack of well read (Beat Writer) paperbacks, a photo of the Blue Door Bookstore in San Diego, some models (Blue Door Bookstore owners) and a sky.

In the final composition the paperbacks are sandwiched between the two bookstores. Color comes down from the sky but becomes gray at street level. There, only the books and the people looking at the books get color. (The young woman gets a little color because she is holding the hand of the fellow looking at the books.) All elements were carefully isolated, reshaped, resized and knitted together, using Photoshop¨ to create the final image. I often place little hidden elements in the image, such as the copyright information marked into the sidewalk on the left side. A Mac G4 was used to drive the software. Images are printed from an Epson 9600 Pro with Ultrachrome pigmented inks onto Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308 gsm paper.