Photographer: Richard Gwin

Camera: Nikon D1X

Bill Bell, Douglas County's director of buildings and grounds, works on taking the hands off a clock face in the county courthouse tower. Pieces of the clock were recently removed for maintenance.

Lens: 28-70mm

Shutter: 1/500

ISO: 200

Aperture: f8

The Douglas County Courthouse clock had seen better days.

I got an assignment to photograph Bill Bell, Douglas County’s director of buildings and grounds, as he dismantled the 1904 Seth Thomas Clock Co. creation. The parts were sent to a timekeeper’s shop in New York for refurbishing.

Bell led me up an old set of stairs at the courthouse. We passed portraits of former judges and stacks of records books on the third floor before ascending an old wooden ladder attached to the wall.

Once inside the clock tower, we headed outside onto the roof. The idea was to shoot Bell removing the hands of the old clock.

If I looked at the clock straight on, the picture was too square. It needed more length to run prominently in our narrow paper. So I moved to the side, until the clock looked almost flat, and switched to a 28-70mm Nikon lens. The clock elongated, and suddenly the picture had depth.

With the composition set, the midday light on the south side of the courthouse made it pretty simple to get a good shot. It ran on the front page of the July 20 paper.

— “Behind the Lens” is an ongoing weekly series that features an image selected by the Journal-World photo staff that previously ran in the newspaper or online. Wondering how a certain picture was created? Nominate it for “Behind the Lens” by contacting chief photographer Mike Yoder at 832-7141 or myoder@ljworld.com.