What IS colour anyway?

We get preoccupied with profiling screens, printers and paper, I'm as guilty as anyone so this is NOT a swipe at ANYONE. I am simply floating how I have been thinking on Photography and printing for a while now. Further, we get almost anal about correctly reproducing in every aspect EXACTLY what we saw.
Some spend untold hours and sums of money chasing an ever more elusive perfection. I know 'cos I have been doing it too!

However, the way I personally got into photography in the first place was via drawing then painting with watercolours then back to oil then out of that into screen printing, chasing an elusive quality called "expression" these art forms require, talent, skill, dexterity and hours and hours of painstaking W O R K

I was attracted to capturing in the moment, and then creating from the initial capture, something that retained elements of the thing or place I saw, but expanded on it with a sorta -"what if" and rediscovered the camera.

That brings me back to profiling (in extremis) and faithfully reproducing a facsimile of what I saw.

Just try to be innovative at Camera Club and watch the members squirming and seething at the interloper (image), their work is as faithful as the bared bottom, planted on the photocopier platen and the scan initiated. Like the bottom, no SOUL. no LIFE, not GRUBBY and a bit TATTY, as we in fact are.

That brings me to colour

Couple of years ago I made an image from outside a Pub I frequented as a younger man. When I revisited the Pub had seen better days so the new owner took to it with abandon (colour wise -pink walls and blue window frames). That brought those that had in their spirit some 'abandon' too.

I have spent the evening messing with prints of that image (A3), may of them - Paper 3c a page, ink 1/200th the price of OEM and creativity as the pass-time and almost a years credit in the printing bank as it were as I have actually done little with the 3880 for the last year!

The issue:

In 250 years, when I am near 500 , there is not one single other person alive who is likely to have seen the 'ROSE" when I did, and certainly will not have a faithful memory of the actual colour on the day nore the prevailing light conditions at the very moment I pressed the shutter button?

I invite you indulgence, have your way with the idea, if you have a moment to spare - please!

What of Artistic Expression-Interperatation, where IS its place in our endeavours, and do we let ourselves off the leash as it were - often enough to nourish our own souls?

Sorry Andrew, but you’ve left me outside that flaming Pup door again, because it was certainly the best expression of profiling that I’ve ever heard, and I don’t even do profiling..

You truly have talent as a wordsmith. Are you Irish like The Hat?
I do not have an answer for you but do look forward to more of your expression-interpretation!

I have learned a lot from the extra efforts of the members here. I have applied what they have taught me, tweaked, modified, thrown away and re-invented ways to accomplish my goals. My waste can is always full of my experiments gone bad. This whole thing is a learning experience and the pleasure derived by me is in the journey.

I read, a while back, a gentleman's poetic description of what he wanted his profiles to do. I've since misplaced it but goes something like this:
"I want my profiles to make my colors pop, my shadows to have more detail and my highlights to be enhanced. I want my profiles to make my photographs look better than I took them."

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Hopefully, through my keen CMYK eye, I will produce results that when viewed by someone else, their mind will wander into the picture and they will have an enjoyable experience for the moment. That's all I can hope for.

soberprint, I have given your comments a bit of 'soak" time, that is just thinking on things, rather than just reacting.
The quote is very profound, and is good. One of the things that prompted me to initiate this introspective thread is viewing the work of a photographer resident in Outback Australia who made a series of images of Ayres Rock (Uluru) the aboriginal name (adopted). In some she had obviously gone to great lengths to achieve sharpness, and colour correction to produce what are truly a series of breathtakingly beautiful images. But then she also twisted the knife a bit and had some (images) where colour was.......well, PUSHED to extremes, where texture and effect combined to carry the viewer to a place (as best my limited articulation can express) of : "what if", and golly gosh! they were equally breathtaking. That experience put me in a lolly shop, as a kid, nose to the glass struggling to decide between the various lollies (Candy) on display.

It was THAT as much as anything else that drove me to print one image over and over.

I did not use the Photocopier analogy by accident. Reproducing with exactitude is a technological achievement. In an era where that level of achievement is within the grasp of even me, using all the aids and props. Admittedly it requires a equally demanding level of skill to actually harness the technology to achieve that "perfection" better than the image made. But at the end of the day, in fact, it is no better or, any greater achievement than heaving yourself up on a photocopier and pressing a button.
What if
I go to a blank piece of paper and try to convey to you not just what I saw with my 20/20 vision, but also what seeing made me feel, to isolate and destill out just those elements that made me gap!

I am not setting out to devalue the works of great exactitude, a family portrait that captures accurately in every detail (warts and all) has great merit. The work of another that uses photoshop to create a pseudo image of what (clearly) is NOT is doing what? .....Satisfying a commercial need or crating an image that has soul.......I am not sure if I know the answer to that, and anyway not what this is about.

It IS about the application and use of colour in printing, because colour drives mood, drives appreciation, drives satisfaction. Media Artists use colour with far less exactitude than the photographer, note colour, NOT resolution and they are no less effective than us?

WHY?

Phew!

I'm lucky enough to enjoy all the aspects of photgraphy and it's reproductive arts. I print both photographs and computer generated graphics, and do some letterpress work. Most of what I do is smaller than A4 size. I do a lot of smaller photos some with text, ie. prayer or inspirational thought and the like. My audience is primarily people in homes, the sick, the not well off. I do a great deal of work for people in recovery. It is very rewarding to me personally.

I use a lot of "spot" colors. When you do letterpress work, you only have 1 or 2 colors to work with so they must compliment the text and border (they don't always but still look nice). When I do my experimenting in black and white, I almost always tint or use some form of duo-toning.

Would I like to just hit the print button and have it come out perfect? I seriously doubt it. I live in Photoshop with all it's bells and whistles and adjustments. I use a raster image processor for my printer driver so I have full control (responsibility) of what it prints out as. I enjoy learning about the "mathematics" of color, Lab, Lch, RGB, CMYK and the like. But it all boils down to what the viewers reaction is when they first see what I have printed.

I'm not a good photographer. I'm not that great a printer. I enjoy what I do and color is a very important aspect of setting the feeling of my "works".

It's funny, when I see the word "color" I think of the primaries (RGB), but when I see the word "colour" my mind wanders into the Pantone pallette of all colours.

I don't know if we're on the same page here, you're a little too far away from me for my telepathic powers to work, but it's very enjoyable to discuss our artforms on a non-mathmatical/technical level.

It's all good.

Indeed, it is pleasurable to amble amongst the chattels of our print life from time to time, if only to refocus our own motivation.
For me this thread is laying down and holding up for scrutiny the non technical aspect of printing things that need resolution for me, an indulgence perhaps, but something I needed to get out.
Your contribution reveals a whole other aspect of what enjoyment, satisfaction, nourishment even, is derived from 'Art'.
Thanks for your input, enjoyed and valued.

Andrew

I and I suspect others lean heavily on Prests in all manner of the tools we use on Photography, for good reasons, we get predictable results - Yes?

Be kind here because I suspect I am "revealing" to myself, something that is in every day use by others, but then slowly and often painfully I am gradually morphing into an 'others'

The captions on the scans explain, however, capture info is 244sec. exposure, @ f11, ISO 100, No10 ND filter - 24mm Focal length

The same digital negative is used for both in Lightroom, just the Printer setup on the 3880 is changed.
The darker image (I thought) captured the mood that I wanted to convey, it was as if the entire eerie scene, sky and all was just a piece created from putty - almost unworldy . BUT when I accidentally printed ( lighter Image) using settings I had been using for printing onto watercolour paper I found that the colour/texture of the foreground rocks actually conveyed the look/feel of the perified clay that I saw on the day. Also that the flat area that forms the lips of this giant beastie, (just below the 'eye') takes on a quasi 3D effect in the print. So much so that I actually tried to flatten the already flat paper!!

NUTHER CUPPA RED anyone?

For me this has just opened up a whole new opportunity to make Cone, Canson, Epson and Xerox a whole lot wealthier

Lips on a giant beastie? I don't know, as it is beyond my pay grade, but I do like the image. Other worldly. Well done!

One question...You wrote "I and I"... are you Rastafarian?

stratman said:

Lips on a giant beastie? I don't know, as it is beyond my pay grade, but I do like the image. Other worldly. Well done!

One question...You wrote "I and I"... are you Rastafarian?

Click to expand...

Wwhich one of us are you addressing?.... or .....

Well, if you look at the top set of rocks left side and imagine a crocodile head, then you are in great DANGER....