‘What Else Is It?’

It’s a picture of a tree at the University of Virginia School of Law. But what else is it?

For more than 20 years, Robert Llewellyn’s photographs have helped depict the beauty of the University of Virginia School of Law environs. The photographer behind the well-known “Albemarle” coffee book, Llewellyn’s work has been the subject of numerous books and exhibits, and the Law School and Foundation communications offices often hire him to take landscape shots around (and above) the school. Sometimes he slips in a few surprises.

He recently explained how he came up with some of the images in this collection offering an offbeat look at the Law School and the summer season.

Llewellyn, who lives in Earlysville, said when he takes photographs, he doesn’t bring “preconceived ideas” to the assignment.

“It comes from a mantra I use in making photographs: ‘What else is it? What else is it? What else is it?’  … ad infinitum,” he said. “Good for all things in life — maybe even law.”

For the photo at the top of this page, Llewellyn came by the Law School at noon to scout — “Most photographers nap at noon,” he noted, due to the harsh light.

“I liked the clouds, so kept photographing them and then later overlayed multiple frames of them in Photoshop,” he said. “There are blending modes in Photoshop that change how the overlay reacts with the original. Photoshop is the giant box of crayons that you never got for Christmas.”

Llewellyn overlaid blurred colored trees on top of this sign in front of the Law School for a “sunlight” effect.

These three images were taken in Spies Garden using multiple exposures looking up at the Law School’s cupola above Caplin Pavilion, trees and the lily pond.

“My camera does double exposures in-camera up to nine frames,” he said. “If I set the camera on continuous, it will shoot all nine frames in a second or so. With these three I quickly rotated the camera during the exposures. Sometimes it works, sometimes no. The fun part is you never know what you are going to get.”

This image was made through a double exposure created in Photoshop with another image. The photographs were taken through glass, giving it the “wobbly bit.”

To create this dreamy vision of Spies Garden, “in Photoshop I made a copy of the original, warmed it up and blurred it, then ‘painted’ in portions over the original.”

Under Llewellyn’s watch, the bench seating near the Law School entrance and visitors’ parking lot becomes a jungle wonderland. He “painted in parts of a new image on the original.” 

Though the light’s connection to the reflected cupola is real, Llewellyn played with the atmosphere in Photoshop by making a duplicate layer, blurring and warming it, then he “painted it as an overlay over the original, and cut through the overlay to the bright light.”

Sometimes finding a unique image is about keeping your eyes open, rather than turning to Photoshop. This photograph may look doctored, but isn’t. “The windows are double-paned glass and the reflection gets reflected over and over, I think from another window across from it.”

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