"By the Light of the Moon" came from a trip to Middle Valley, NJ a couple of months ago in search of an abandoned property I had visited almost 13 years ago. To my surprise, a photographer friend of mine ran across it and told me it still existed! She recognized it from one of my images, "Remains of the Day", featuring an old wicker rocking chair on the porch of an abandoned house. Since I'm really terrible sometimes at keeping track of places I've photographed, I thought it couldn't possibly be the same chair after 13 years! This was one time I was happy to be wrong! The property was a little worse for wear, but it was definitely the same place! I had also used another one of the buildings there in "Rear Window" and yet another in "The Bucket" (the latter of which has since been demolished). On my first visit, the house used in this piece was too overgrown to get any usable images but not so this time around! I liked the composition in this shot taken from beneath a huge old tree in front of the house but it needed something more. The old man is from my vintage photo collection, the bird and the moon from the back window of my house. I added some texture, filters and a little tweaking to get the final montage. What a wealth of art material I've gained from the demise of these beautiful old buildings.
