Color Quantum Photography: Expanding the Palette of Photography "The problem with color is that it is overpowering. Color can flatten form, destroy shape, and confuse line, and the more colors you add, the more weaker elements are suppressed. The appeal of bright colors is also so strong that we often pursue them while ignoring the important matters of content and style - producing pictures that lack any further interest once the immediate impact of the color has passed. And whereas a black and white picture is by its nature an interpretation of reality, color by its realism tempts us to try to record the "true" colors of a scene. The true creative advantage of color is not realism, but eloquence. Color is passionate and sensual, appealing directly to our emotions. Its beauty can be a subject in itself, and it can convey different moods, or command attention. But it is never neutral - every time we see a color image it arouses in us some emotional response. To use color well, you must understand this emotional language, and apply it consciously. ...Simplicity is essential to good color photography. You must strip your subject down to its barest essentials, using very few colors and bold images, so that the emotional, almost surreal qualities of color can dominate the picture without destroying it. The strongest color photographs are those in which you see the color first, and then the image, not the other way around." Adrian Bailey & Adrian Holloway The Book of Color Photography There is an adjustment needed just to determine what it is one is looking at upon seeing these photographs. Some photographs are obviously strange and different in appearance, while others have subtle differences that cannot detected right away. This is photography that has to be observed critically, which means not art criticism, but asking one's self general questions about why these photographs look different and how these photographs were made. Quantum photography is not weird photography for weirdness's sake, it is a way of seeing. The proof of this can be seen in the difference between my images and the images created by others using the same film. While they use a film just for effect, I use a film to test the limits (as defined by the properties of its emulsion) of its ability to record an image. The difference is the philosophy on my part, and the lack of philosophy on theirs. The word ,"quantum", evokes some of the strangeness associated with quantum theory. Quantum photography differs from photography in the way that Einstein's contributions differ from Newton's. Just as there can be no Einstein without Newton, quantum photography is well within the tradition and the history of photography. Quantum photography does not invalidate the past, but instead puts the past into a certain perspective as well as being given a certain perspective by it. This is photography done at the film level; the behavior of the chemical emulsion of photographic film being struck by light. Through practice, the behavior of an emulsion is observed. One can then imagine and choose subjects that can be expected to exploit that film's behavior. The process is analogous to determining if a subject is best suited to black and white or color film (with both being a possibility), but in quantum photography, the roles of the subject and the film are reversed. The effects of color quantum photography vary greatly in subject suitability, but they are much wider than I thought they would be. In relation to the quotes above, color quantum images have a unique characteristic of indeterminacy: they are neither like the color nor the black and white images we are currently familiar with, but something in between. This is because color quantum images behave like black and white. Instead of just being an overpowering element of the composition, color becomes a medium to be used as means of expression by photography. The color is no longer representative, lulling the observer and taking away from the photographic aspects of the image. The tension of the indeterminacy comes from seeing color and thinking color. Indeterminacy is the reason why quantum images remind many viewers of painting. Even when the colors are representative of reality, we do not think of paintings are mere documents of reality. In quantum photography, color loses none of its emotional power and gains the interpretive powers of black and white. For this reason, the color and image are mentally out of phase. It takes concentration to think about them together, and one mentally oscillates between thinking about the subject and feeling the impact of the color. Even for me, it is disorienting to experience what feels like black and white photographs while clearly seeing that the images are in color. essay continued

Click photo to go to thumbnails screen