Exploring Color Photography

This top cutaway view of the human skull reveals how color images are believed to be formed in the brain.

Exploring Color Photography

Adam Fuss says, The lens is a manipulation of an image. To me the photogram is a nonmanipulation of the object and the interaction of the object with light and the direct recording of that. To me thats pure photographic imagery. Its a different language of light. The one with the camera has seemingly a lot more detailed information, but I find that there is information of a different kind that is no less rich. Adam Fuss. Untitled, 2001. 6134 5014 inches. Dye-destruction print. Courtesy of Cheim & Read, New York, NY.

The ovals in this illustration are the same color. The oval on the right appears to have a greater luminance than the oval on the left because both color luminance and saturation are subjective and dependent on the surrounding colors.

The two halves of the circle are the same color, yet the human eye does not see them as the same color. This phenomenon is an example of color relativity.

Stare steadily at the black inverted triangle on the left, and then quickly shift your focus to the inverted triangle at the right. In the reversed afterimage the white areas of the original will appear as blue and the blue areas as pale orange.

Using digital technology, Akihiko Miyoshi makes grid images out of photographs of urban landscapes and natural scenes. The colors rendered in each grid are averaged and reduced into a single color. Elemental properties of color are distilled to create landscapes from the colors that are present in the original image. A liberation of color from form occurs without obliterating the recognizable value of the original image. Akihiko Miyoshi. Harlem, New York, NY, 2003. 20 x 24 inches. Inkjet print.

To balance the natural light from the sunset with the artificial light shining on the spacecraft, Roland Miller used a spot meter to measure the area of the sky that he wanted to use as a midtone and compared that with readings taken from the neutral midtones in the launch tower. When he later color-corrected the image in Photoshop, Miller determined the neutrality of the midtones by using the Color sample tool and establishing an appropriate compromise of the colors from the varying light sources. As an imagemaker, he believes in striving for a balance between technique and aesthetics. He elaborates, It is important to attain technical competence in order to gain control of the media, but not to meet some false expectation of the craft. On the other hand, a wonderful concept, poorly executed, fails to be wonderful. One of my goals is to find an appropriate equilibrium. Roland Miller. STS125 Atlantis Sunset, 2009. 20 24 inches. Inkjet print.