Abstract Waters: Slow Seeing with Quick Eyes

My eyes see the overall nature of the dancing designs, while being too slow to catch the details which the camera records.

Color is Experiential

Our impression of color in a scene depends on the mix of colors present, on the brilliance or dynamic range, and on any motion, such as of flowing or wind-blown water.  A fine print can express much of our perception of the million to one brightness range of a sunlit scene, through adept translations of brightnesses and contrasts to the fifty to one range of a print.

I print my Abstract Waters images for colors to express my experience, which you could have shared standing with me at the scene.  Colors are lightened or darkened, contrasts increased or decreased, to convey my experienced impression.  It’s the same approach as used in traditional darkroom printing, which I did for twenty-five years, but now done on a computer — my own custom color lab.  The colors in my prints were present in the scenes, and I have used printing craft to express them effectively, often with emphasis to convey the excitement we experience viewing a scene.

Can printed color be factually objective?  Rarely so.  Especially not when a scene is bathed in a variety of lights and shadows.  An informative test is to select a fully satisfying print, and set it next to its actual subject, in good light.