While visiting downtown Joliet last week, I spent much of my time capturing pictures of the Will County Courthouse. During past visits, I never thought to take photos of the building. From the street, the front entrance isn't all that appealing. There are several distracting elements in front of the building and it's almost always backlit during this time of the year.

This time, I happened to walk to the back of the building. From the back, the scene is simplified. From there, it's all about the geometry. I ended up taking several different pictures--all from the same vantage point and with the same lens.

Here's one of the images from the session. I liked the nearly perfect symmetry:

Will County CourthouseWill County Courthouse at 14 W. Jefferson Street in Joliet, Illinois on March 17, 2016 To achieve this level of symmetry, I made some modifications using Photoshop. Here's the original image:

Will County CourthouseWill County Courthouse at 14 W. Jefferson Street in Joliet, Illinois on March 17, 2016 The original image is symmetrical, but that tree on the right bothered me. The image isn't nearly as clean with the bare branches extending through the sky and in front of the building. Rather than go through the tedious process of cloning out the branches, I applied what I refer to as the Mirror Trick.

Click here to view a blog entry that I posted a while back about how to use the Mirror Trick.

Not only did the Mirror Trick clean up the frame, but it helped make the picture perfectly symmetrical!

Finally, I thought the conversion to black and white simplified the image even further. Hopefully, all that's left are the lines, the geometry and the symmetrical shape (now highlighted in white) that I wished to feature.