Starting with my photo of the Westfield Mall dome, I stayed up most of the night and worked the image in Photoshop. A trick with this kind of thing is knowing when to stop. But here’s a resting point:

Time Is No Watchmaker’s Dial, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

While it’s no complete roadmap, I used these channel inversions to create studies to use to eventually build up my more complicated images:

I piled the studies on top of one another as layers. I combined the layers, using primarily Difference and Exclusion blending modes.

I layer masked the results and hand painted in the colors to begin to go shag-o-delic, baby:

With the psychedelic in place, I could combine it with itself (and play slightly with sizing) to come up with image shown at the beginning of this story.

Of course, it’s hard to stop when you’re on a sleep deprivation and good food binge fueled by Macworld and my birthday weekend, so why not invert the inversions? When does it ever end?

From top to bottom: Time Is No Watchmaker’s Dial, Dome Studies (1 through 4), Dome Psychedelic, Watchmaker Dial (A and B).

Related story: Oakland of My Mind also shows my progression from straight photos to fantastic imagery.