Dante’s Prayer

Today’s piece was inspired by Loreena McKennitt’s hauntingly beautiful Dante’s Inferno; take a listen while you look at this photograph if you want a taste of what I was working with while doing my post processing.Â As you have no doubt figured out, today’s work is a combination of several photographs, post processing tricks, filters and textures.Â Several of the tricks I used today I had no idea how to accomplish, so I spent some time experimenting before I got things right.Â In the end, it was worth it because I am quite pleased with the result and feel like I actually created something different.Â I’d be curious to hear what you all think.

This is straight out of hell, well done Jacques!

Thanks, Jesse. It was cool to use this small project to learn some cool new Photoshop skills.

Little projects that take you out of the comfort zone are always good ideas. This is a very compelling image. Thanks for sharing it!

The angles and colors really make your eye wander around! I LOVE it! It is very very dark and dramatic. You really are a leading artist of our generation, in my opinion…. 🙂

OK Jacques, this may get a bit lengthy, but here goes. Being human, all of us are at constant battle between the fallen, sinful nature of an imperfect being and the spiritual, righteous path that we were designed for. The sinful nature is a much easier door to enter and the righteous door is a tougher, more brutal one to find and reach. When I see this image, I see the door to Hell being right in front of me and easy to open, where the path to Heaven’s door is much more arduous and troublesome. It sums up our constant battle! Well done my friend!

Wow Jacques, this is a very compelling image! The tones, textures and colors are wonderful. The processing on this is spot on man. It’s about the closest view of Hell I ever want to see.

Hey friends. Thanks you, sincerely. Jim; I love your analysis. Spot on my friend. My wife thought I shout obscure the door more, but I decided to keep it in the end. To me, the door could represent the point at which man enters to encounter a decision point; let’s say, he enters to face temptation, for example. He then chooses, wisely, to face the uphill (upstairs) battle of avoiding the temptation in favor of getting closer to God, or he chooses poorly, entering the massive doors of the inferno on the first level. The other thing that spoke to me about this scene is that while you see the various sets of stairs up to heaven, none of which seem a sure thing (no hand rails to keep you from falling into temptation again, or despair), you still never see God; thus, it requires great faith to take those many flights of stairs, never truly knowing what is up there, or that there is a doorway above trough which you can pass.

Oh my, the great faith vision of this is amazing and never came to mind! Excellent my friend!

Stunning image. This one is amazing. The richness the depth makes me want to cry. This is simply an amazing image.