View high resolution
Actually, if anything, Leibovitz is sort of infamous for going to locations she could have easily (and less expensively) faked, but instead she blows through travel/location budgets. The lighting here could easily have been on location, and it isn’t really a terribly complicated shot/scene, and the actress would likely have had the time for such a location.
Times she has more recently resorted to digital backdrops have been (from the ones I can recall) due to time limitations and/or complex concepts (George Clooney in the ocean comes to mind, where he had the girls around him and he was controlling the big light - some recent Italian shoots - and then the infamous Queen series where she was just severely limited by time).
At least at the size I see here, nothing really screams “digital backdrop” to me here.
Cate Blanchett - Vogue by Annie Leibovitz, December 2009
Cate looks flawless. I like the layout of the cover (Except maybe the Overstressed/Undersexed banner over the V. Really? Again with the Ladies Home Journal headlines, so not Vogue), but the whole digital painting background looks odd. It reminds me of when the dancers on So You Think You Can Dance have to perform in front of stock footage of an autumnal meadow.
