The key to taking pictures of buildings and structures is simplification. I try to find a single important aspect of a building and somehow emphasize it photographically. The most important complex of historical buildings in China, the Forbidden City is a walled collection of gates, palaces and gardens that covers 180 acres of space. Twenty-four Chinese emperors and their retinues of maids, eunuchs and concubines roamed its 10,000 rooms between 1421 and 1911. It is impossible to tell the whole story in one picture – there simply is too much to say about such a stupendous historical, architectural, and artistic site as this. For this image, I concentrated on a single, simple idea – scale. The Forbidden City is big, and I wanted to embrace it all yet still not show it all. I had to find a way to grasp it, yet abstract it, implying its scale but not describing it. I visited the Forbidden City twice. On my first visit, with an organized tour, I explored the inside – hall-by-hall, object-by-object. On my second visit, I returned by myself, but never went inside. Instead, I climbed Coal Hill, which stands just behind the Forbidden City within Jingshan Park, by far the best spot to appreciate the sheer scale of the palace complex. Nature had stepped in by adding fog to abstract the scene, allowing me to photographically imply, rather than actually describe, the nature of the Forbidden City. The complex is designed as a linear series of huge gates, courtyards, halls and palaces. Using a 245mm telephoto conversion lens on my digital camera, I was able to flatten perspective, zoom over the trees in the foreground, and pull the great structures closer together as they recede into the fog. The closer you look at this photo, the more you’ll see. The fog simplifies the image, yet there is still fascinating detail visible. Note the tiny figures entering the gate at the bottom – they tell us how large the structure is. A small bird wheels in the sky overhead – capturing it was not a matter of luck. Digital imaging is free – there were many birds flying about, and I shot this scene twenty or thirty times until I was able to place one in the right spot.