smokeysun and colour a revival

[Guest stnami]

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Hi Wayne time to revive colour and photography as in the old forum see how ideas and focus changes. I deceided to play with saturating bleached colours

eg

[smokysun]

hi imants,

 

funny you should bring it up. i ordered the autochrome book and they forgot to ship it. i'll have it next week.

 

very nice shot. personally, i really like vivid color and always set my camera on it. in fact, unlike other people i set everything high, except noise reduction.

 

i feel like you're very lucky to come from sculpture to photography. no matter what you do you get a 3d effect that i haven't seen in anyone else's work.

 

recently i took group photos of the kids at the theater and played with them. blue room kids summer 2006 Photo Gallery by wayne pease at pbase.com and you'll see how much i played with color, all the way from b\w to over-the- top. this is certainly a major pleasure of digital.

 

that said, the secret is definitely the right amount of information, not too much, not too little. and why i'm driven to examine a b/w for details while i feel they actually forbid examination and/or are not interesting in a color photo i can't tell you. any suggestions?

 

thanks for reviving this topic. i feel it's a major one. effects easy to get in b/w because it's automatically transformation. ('all art is transformation.') with color the transformation aspect trickier. looking at matisse and reading a book about him. the control a painter has is something now at the photographer's disposal. but what is the magical way of doing it? that's the big question.

 

wayne

[smokysun]

ps. finished reading 'chasing matisse' by james morgan. easy reading and you get to experience someone changing their life, plus learning a lot about matisse (and how he was never satisfied, even at the end of his life).

 

oddly, we haven't talked about one fact: 99.999% of pictures will now be seen on a screen: lcd, hdtv, or electronic picture frame. most will never be printed. this has some interesting repercussions.

 

how is a photographer to make money without selling prints? one obvious answer with the advent of hdtv is to sell disks (or an online service). the problem is: what always wins contests and what people want are landscapes (and travel). these to calm and inspire them. i doubt if other kinds will prove profitable. (and those with 9:16 will probably lead the pack).

 

on the other hand, the great advantage is the ability to show pictures like slides but with a wider color range. the computer has fantastic colors yet to make it into print. (and translucence adds something special.)

 

most people here talk about prints, but far more people will look at your pictures on the web. for example, phil douglis, sometimes of this forum, uses an fz 30 and d-lux two for his travel stuff and primarily online. thus noise not an issue and he doesn't need ten thousand dollars worth of heavy equipment to lug around. as of this moment he's had almost 2 million hits on his site: pbase Artist Phil Douglis

 

and he does a lot of post-processing for vivid color, which people love and dominates the all-time favorite pbase galleries. (slug, the owner of pbase, has had over 13 million hits.)

 

wayne

[Bob Ross]

Hi Wayne,

You bring up an interesting subject about what the final product will be. You can choose paper, screen or projection or all of the above. I sometimes wonder at posters saying that they have made 50 or so 18"X24" prints from their latest shoot and these aren't Pros selling prints. Most of our friend into digital do the snap shot print thing and I have a neighbor who does High School baseball with a Canon 1DmkII and sells 4" X 6" prints and it pays for his equipment habit. Personaly I print bookmarks, cards, calendars and an occational book. Once in a while I get something worth hanging that replaces something on our overcrowded walls. I like printing, because I always did the darkroom thing, but what to do with all the prints become an issue. Making fine prints for friends and relatives is also a problem when they don't have any where to hang them. They do like little prints for their albums, though.

This does affect equipment choices and the way we do color and composition. Still the print does demand the most skill and image quality, IMO.

Bob

[Guest stnami]

I doubt if I will ever print the image on this thread,or would even want to (couldn't live with the colours).

[Guest stnami]

Wiith the calming down of colour over the last few seasons the same still holding true today, the photo industry moves further away from strong mutli colour usage, Time to showcase new palettes; each with a sense of independence from each other but all having elements that cross over and work in a melodious manner.

Just like a fashion statement about colour and it is!

[smokysun]

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hi bob,

 

i guess it's like gardening. friends who love doing it have a hard time giving the stuff away! one local gallery that sells a lot of local work at fairly high prices says photographs almost impossible to sell, everybody making their own. and at another gallery, she loves photographs but few do sell.

 

part of the problem is: we look at a photo quickly and not for long, while a painting may hold our attention for years. if a photo is 'used up' so quickly, we don't want it hanging around. that's why personal photos keep their pleasure and mystery, reminding us of a whole series of events, emotions, etc.

 

certain photos are mysterious, and i think, as i've mentioned, john berger's analysis of four kertesz photos in 'another way of telling' gives the answer. how a certain set of correspondences ends up expressing a universal. but i'm not sure one can learn to do this. even kertesz, when he came to ny, lost this particular touch (for me). in an environment where he felt at home he perceived the universal quality in an ordinary event.

 

a local fine printer once told me: "don't trust your friends. they may make you think your pictures better than they are. i see it all the time."

 

hi imants,

 

have you every played with the painter program? it has one feature i've never see elsewhere. you can create a palette in one stroke from one picture, then with one stroke you can posterize another picture with that palette. it's fun to take a victorian xmas card and use the colors to change a present day advertising pic, and so on. it's an easy and fun way to experiment.

 

yes, what can we live with, that always seems the main question for me. and i usually end up with colorful but somewhat subdued posters!

 

good luck on your quest.

 

thanks to you both,

 

wayne

[comapedrosa]

"[...] Just like a fashion statement about colour and it is"

 

That's about the best think I've read here in quite a while! You capture in a short paragraph a question I've been pondering on for some time now. Moving back and forth at a faster pace than ever between old and new trends.

[Guest stnami]

A repeat of what I wrote in the photo forum that also applies to this image I posted here in terms of colour

These actions(velvia hybrids) in photoshop produce a better result on scanned colour negs ( as these images are) than with digital images. The colour hues on digital are even in gradation and produce a flatter result even in a high major key, where as the neg's colour rendition seems to have greater and starker latitude within colour hues. Having said that the closest I get with digital is on the D2 at 200iso raw as my starting 'negative' the extra luminosity and colour noise of the sensor does the trick along with the rendition created by the lens.

Hopefully similiar results will be attainable with playing with a M8 and older lenses, but that is too far in the future for me to worry about and not a problem if the D2 does the trick.

 

One thing about photographers following fashion trends is that it takes them out of their comfort zone

 

Wayne I use the painter application in my workshops, though it tends to destroy a photographic based image quickly, like playing five card stud one card and woooshkaaar it's all gone.

[smokysun]

yes, we're in a strange place in history, every past style, writing, etc. at our disposal, especially on the net. and fashion itself uses them all, sometimes in the same magazine.

 

my question is: is there a difference between beauty and fashion? are we at the end of history and is fashion all we have left?

 

hi imants,

 

very interesting about your use of color and the d2. (that's why these general questions important. they lead to specific applications.)

 

maybe i don't mind the flatness of the color because i'm drawn toward japanese prints and artists like bonnard and vuillard, both very influenced by the japanese. i also like posters and silk-screen. when photos mixed in with these, i like the collage contrast.

 

as for leaving your comfort zone to follow fashion, the wisest seem to pursue their own bent and let fashion come around to them. (is it that circular?) just finished a small book on gustave moreau, symbolist teacher of rouault and matisse, among others. in the midst of the realist/impressionist bent of the time, he stuck with his mythology. his stuff very camp (as the getty museum is completely 'camp') to us, but if you get a kick out of that style, a big show of moreau in mexico city was memorable. (his house now a museum in paris.) and eventually a whole symbolist movement in art and literature arouse out of his work. his color influence especially had long-range effects via the Fauves.

 

don't you think it's wise to build on what you do best? willy mays said, 'i go with my strengths and forget my weaknesses.'

 

wayne

[Bob Ross]

These actions(velvia hybrids) in photoshop produce a better result on scanned colour negs ( as these images are) than with digital images. The colour hues on digital are even in gradation and produce a flatter result even in a high major key, where as the neg's colour rendition seems to have greater and starker latitude within colour hues.

Hi Imants,

Your observations on color hues being even in digital is interesting. With all the mutterings about resolution & noise, I have often inserted comments that we should be looking at tonal and color gradients instead. I am as often ignored, or is that lost in the detail.. Now, you make a remark that I interpret as linear gradients vs. non-linear gradients and truthfully, I haven't looked for that quality. In the gray scale tonalality this might be why digital looks a bit sterile compared to film, until some curve work is done to change it.

I think it is in understanding what the software engineers decided on, that we will find a way to manage the changes and get what we ultimately want in the images.

The Kodak & Oly people along with the Pros that put the E-1 image quality together, seemed to have noticed some of the finer details in the gradient profiles. The D2 images also have that profile, from the examples that I have seen and worked with.

Bob

[Guest stnami]

I have to eat my words since I stared playing around with some scanned imagesand now have a redefined space for film in my artwork though they will be digitally altered prints as a final product unless

........I alter those as well.......

having an extra colour space is advantageous

[smokysun]

having an extra colour space is advantageous

 

i can definitely see that. and it may help the workflow to add another level: film. it slows things down.

 

alas, for me, i like to work fast and randomly, looking for accidents. that's why raw doesn't help. i'm not looking for a particular kind of perfection and depend a lot on accidents to inspire me. this is a flaw, as i'll never develop a style. your pictures have a definite kinship with each other. you work on a picture like a piece of sculpture. so probably you will alter it again!

 

wayne

[Guest stnami]

Chinese documentary photographer Li Zhensheng 'Red Color News Soldier' (book), and documentary artist photographer Wu Jialin both B&W photographers but interesting.

Check out Michael Thompson' s (ex Irving Penn assistant) theatrical colour work

[Bob Ross]

I have to eat my words since I stared playing around with some scanned imagesand now have a redefined space for film in my artwork though they will be digitally altered prints as a final product unless

........I alter those as well.......

having an extra colour space is advantageous

Some of my finest altered color space prints from the wet days came from cross contamination:D They are definitely one of a kind, because I could never quite recreate the chemical imbalances needed:mad: Fooling with Cibachrome chemicals in a closed space could also create altered consciousness states:eek:

BTW, my experiments to mimic autochrome via extracted channels haven't produced anything useful. Creating a mask of heavy RGB noise and using an inverted version (negative) is better. Composites with these masks tend to get really big (MBs).

Bob

[smokysun]

Michael Thompson: photographer @ Metasearch.com

 

Wu Jialin @ Metasearch.com

 

 

here are a couple of search pages on wu jialin and michael thompson. and i've ordered the 'red color news soldier' from amazon. the michael thompson site at jed root inc. pretty amazing for the number of pics it allows you to peruse (under beauty, etc). he obviously likes matisse!

 

the pursuit of color by the post-impressionists quite amazing. evidently cezanne the first to define space with color and not line.

 

i still feel the mystery of the specific nature and possible use of color in digital yet to come. i'd love to walk into a gallery and feel 'this is it.' as captivated as i am by bonnard and vuillard (who cannot be reproduced in books). this photographer has made the breakthru.

 

and, bob, that's exactly what i mean by accidents. those one-of-a-kind photos could be your most valuable!

 

thanks for the tips,

 

wayne

[smokysun]

ps. anyone read this book (comments from amazon reader):

 

Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace" by Dan Margulis is definitely worth reading and is most entertaining. I don't agree that it is "the most revolutionary book on digital imaging ever written" and it is certainly not a comprehensive look at Photoshop CS2. If you want comprehensive, get the gold standard: "Real World Photoshop CS2.

 

But there are some interesting gems buried in here that might improve your digital output. To me the biggest discovery was the idea of using curves in LAB color space to increase color variability. We are not just talking saturation here, but rather color separation. His explanation for why we want this is that cameras lack the sense of simultaneous contrast common to most human beings. When we see a lot of similar colors in close proximity, we break them apart. He shows how we can do that in Photoshop. It makes a big difference on some images.

 

His writing style is quirky, intelligent and often funny. That helps for such complex ideas. I think this book should only by used by advanced

[Guest stnami]

LAB colour curves are available in the mac raw convertor RAW Developer, does make a difference. There are some big supporters of LAB colour, almost to a fanatical Leica sensibility

[smokysun]

hi imants,

the pluginsite provided a link to a free new photoshop plugin (pc) for doing lab work. here's the key:

 

Pog is working on a new plugin called Lab Blender. It basically does an overlay blend of the image with itself in Lab mode. The interface looks quite complex with its dozens of sliders, but you can use it as a toy and play a bit with it. For the latest Version 0.48 please click the "[FYI] Lab Blender minor update" link at

 

Pog’s Notes

 

i've read his instructions on using it but maybe you could give me a clearer sense of what it's supposed to do.

 

thanks,

 

wayne

 

ps. some new theater portraits for the upcoming show: recent tragic events dir. joe hilsee Photo Gallery by wayne pease at pbase.com always trying to get the pics to reflect the show.

 

pss. bob, does this look anything like an autochrome?

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Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[Bob Ross]

 

pss. bob, does this look anything like an autochrome?

It reminds me of 3M ASA 500 slide film:D The subject is better than the ones that I used and that might make a difference. Your colors look good. The grain doesn't look like dyed potato starch, it is too monochrome. Your original comment that "Autochrome was pure noise" probably should be revised to "Autochrome is pure chromatic noise". Not only RGB, but it has yellow, too. I think, too, that as the medium matured the grain got finer and the colors more accurate. The image that Imants posted seemed to show less chromatic grain than others that I have seen. The main problem is that I have only seen reproductions. It is like never having seen a platinum print in person. So, I am doing a lot of guessing about it.

Bob