Having some time to return to Lightwave and a truly spiffy new model of the TMP drydock which was just released by its modeler, I decided to address an image bunny which had been itching me for a while. Namely, I'd wanted to do a take on this Andrew Probert painting with the Enterprise reflected pre- and post-refit. I ultimately remembered a photo from 1912 of the Titanic and her sister ship Olympic side-by-side at the repair yard and decided to do something similar.
In this case, the newly-upgraded Enterprise has returned to Earth so the engineers of the U.S.S. Endeavour can get some practical experience with the new designs as they begin to refit their own ship.
I colored the main light as if the sun had just set at that moment. It gives the picture a bit of a sepia tone. It also explains why the image is so grainy, because the photo had to be taken at a very high ISO since there was no more direct sunlight.
I pulled the colors from this photo. In retrospect, I botched the lighting a little, as you can see banded shadows because I used two lights, one blue to represent the upper sky, and one red to represent the sky at the horizon. I am, however, very happy with the coherence (for want of a better term) of the image. A lot of times, the different eras of Star Trek can end up looking like totally different universes, and I feel like I avoided that in this one. There doesn't seem anything at all odd about the original series and movie era sitting side-by-side.I'm actually thinking I might be able to get a little more milage out of this picture. I may try out some alternate lighting setups.
