I went down to Washington to do the necessary research for this image as for the others in the Landmark series. The Supreme Court sits on an intersection near the Capitol, and there are no particular difficulties in taking photos of its main entrance, by which it is well known to anyone who reads the newspapers. At first glance there doesn't seem to be anything very special about the building. It's a very straightforward rendition of a Roman temple, a form that was becoming boringly familiar in the late 1930's, when the building was erected. There is a slight sense that the architect had run out of ideas, that the great tradition had run its course. My problem was to overcome the sense of conventionality, of the lack of any surprising element.

In truth, the building is quite dramatic: particularly as one mounts its steps and approaches its bronze doors, one is impressed by its grand scale and the great craftsmanship with which it was put together. Unfortunately it's very hard to capture this excitement in a photo. I took many pictures, all of which were nice, but they were no different from the pictures that are taken every day by every bozo with a camera. But in one set of photos I was lucky: I shot the building as it was in transition from a backlighted to a frontlighted moment. The light from the sun struck the vast expanse of white marble in front of the building and bounced it upward to the facade, which was still in shadow. In that way the light came not from the sky, but unexpectedly it radiated from the ground. This was the key element. I added some fluttering flags, a few birds, a wispy cloud, and bit by bit the picture took its final form. The sense of majestic scale is a very important: I tried to emphasize that aspect of the building by having it fill as much of the picture as I could, and by having human figures diminish in size as they get further from the picture plane. Depictions of human figures are essential in architectural rendering: without them there's no way to tell how big the building is.

The final dramatic touch comes from the crowd that animates the scene. I got the idea of rendering the historic moment of the Watergate period from a photo that I found in the collection of the Washington Post. The paper's photog had shot Leon Jaworski in his moment of triumph as he left the Court: he is shown in the photo just as I render him here. Head down, holding all the cards. Surrounded by eager reporters and gleeful Democrats. In order to draw the crowd I asked some friends to walk up and down the steps at Columbia University while I shot them with a camcorder. Freeze frames from the video were very useful.

I think it's notable that I used a lot of technical resources that were not readily available until recently, thanks to the development of digital technology. Without these resources I suppose that the work would have required a much greater investment of manpower and cost. This fact might explain why I was (to the best of my knowledge) the first artist to attempt a serious rendering of any of the landmarks.