Alberta Venture's September cover features the Bow, Calgary's tallest tower at 58 storeys, in an homage to the July 1964 issue of Fortune and its dynamic shot of the New York Time & Life building.

On Fortune's cover, windows from 20 floors are lit to form the number 500 for the mag's annual list of the 500 largest corporations in America. Likewise, the Bow's windows trumpet Alberta Venture's annual rundown of the province's 250 biggest companies. (Fortune itself has replicated this treatment, using the number 75 for its 75th anniversary in 2005.)


While Fortune had to arrange for the special lighting (made easier since the New York building housed the magazine's headquarters), Alberta Venture could take advantage of modern technology. Using a single camera, multiple shots of the Bow were taken over the course of an hour, and then Photoshop was used to conjure the final image with the desired message. "All we needed was the building completely dark, and then completely lit," editor Michael Ganley explains in a behind-the-scenes note.

Shooting at dusk, a storm was seen brewing and heavy lightning and rain seemed imminent but the weather evened out. "I was waiting for it to be one of those Alberta thunderstorms, where it just opens up and really dumps on us, but it didn’t, thank God," said photographer John Gaucher, according to Ganley's account. "We were about as close as you could get without it getting ruined."

Alberta has been associated with severe weather of late, which Ganley said contributes to the cover's impact. "The Bow has become a symbol of Alberta’s growing affluence and prominence on the national and international scenes," he said in a release. "While art director Kim Larson conceived of the idea long before the June flooding, that tragedy has added to the poignancy of the finished product."

Venture Publishing has a video account of the shoot below.