Color Theory | Make Light Real

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Now the earth was ^[a] formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness.
God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Well, where to start with all that.

First do you have any potential biases? Have you ever considered the truth contained in Hebrew scriptures? If you can find truth in the oldest spiritual text on the planet - then you might have a chance with a lens too. Clear your mind of any haze of skepticism and find the essence of these scriptures and how they may effect you.

Vs. 1 is an intro - kinda set’s the stage with the most important summary of all. Connect with God and you’ll connect with creativity itself, more on that later.

Vs. 2 - can you actually conceptualize nothingness? Try it - oops - no you can’t do that, because you exist - I kinda see this verse along those lines. A little gotcha joke, that teaches a lesson. Quantum physics is now just learning and informing us that the mind creates the universe……another very tricky catch22, that we all find the answer to when we die.

Vs. 3 - Ok so we’ve tackled some pretty major philosophical hurdles, what’s next? Well we know a few things about light now in the Twenty First century. We admit to knowing less about God so let’s put it together. E=mc² is the best explanation that we have so far. It’s no such thing as why - but a very nice how. Energy, can become matter if it’s moving fast/slow enough. Pretty cool so Genesis has it right, God created ‘light’ and there was matter all nice and tidy in His one substance. Those ancient people knew a bit of something about reality didn’t they! they just communicate it differently than we do.

Now let’s draw some parallels that are important for our craft. God’s first creation he used for our primary interface with the world. I don’t mean to Kinda tricky how he did that eh? We are created to interact with the light. Ponder the multidimensional wonder of that thought for a while since you’ve now realized that light gives us information, as well as creates the substance we inhabit.

But wait, I have to burst that wonderful thought bubble to break in that we don’t actually interact with the light anymore - we interact with the darkness. Yep, you’re responding to the darkness around you. The darkness tells you where your keyboard is; the darkness tells you where the subject in your viewfinder is; the darkness defines color and shape in your photographic prints. The study of visual perception has been around since the Greeks were able to guess that light came into our eyes, and the first photography book that really opened up my mind to understand the intricacy of how we see was Perception and Imaging by Richard Zakias. It is always my first recommendation for those seeking to study photography and understand building a photograph with visual elements.

So here you begin to understand the levels upon which I developed the concept and the motivation for this site - to Make Light Real

As another perspective on light as a key to metaphsyics, you can watch this clip by Bob Proctor

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Color Theory , Creativity , Inspiration , On Art , Philosophy , Photography Lighting , Technical
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Understanding Contrast part1: Gamma

Neil January 29th, 2008

Welcome to my series on understanding contrast.

Defined by dictionary.com: Understanding defined in the realm of Philosophy.

The power of abstract thought; logical power.
Kantianism. the mental faculty resolving the sensory manifold into the transcendental unity of apperception.

I love Kant’s creative use of verbage: the mental faculty resolving the sensory manifold into the transcendental unity of apperception.

I’m not talking to wimpy vague or basic knowledge of contrast. I’m talking about the pure verb of ‘understanding’=the power, of abstract thought. I want to inspire you into resolving the sensory perceptions of your excited artistic manifold perceptions into the transcendental unity of expression. Let’s get down in the nitty gritty past our misconceptions, half-

Gamma, baby yea! (say it out loud in your sexy Austin Powers voice)

p.98 of Dan Margulis’s Photoshop LAB Color —

“The answer to these stimulating questions is the gamma setting. A gamma of 1.0 would mean that the midpoint is exactly halfway between the two extremes, in the opinion of a machine. Most color theoreticians don’t like that structure. They feel, correctly, that human beings perceive more contrast in dark things than in light ones. Therefore, at a gamma of 1.0, the difference between 200R 200G 200B, a very light gray, and 195R 195G 195B will be percieved as a smaller diference than between, say, 100R 100G 100B and 95R 95G 95B. ….This heinous lack of perceptual uniformity, in their view, justifies a fudge factor. The midpoint, they feel, should be defined as a darker grey than the machine would like. ….Therefore, values darker than 128R 128G 128B will be packed closer together than before, and those whose lighter will be further apart. More values are now being devoted to portrayal of dark colors and fewer to light colors….”

We will delve deeper into this topic in Chaper 13….

Well I didn’t start out with ‘this is what contrast is’ because I don’t think you’d get it without wiping away some of the misconceptions that are haunting you and keeping your vision tied up. So let’s get something straight - your eyes don’t see things as they are. Your eyes adjust things to emphasize the shadows.

In sRGB, with it’s larger fudge factor, it’s a darker 54L0A0B. Think about these two numbers, and a surprising secret comes slithering out from under a stone. Neither of these two artifically darkened RGB midtones is as dark as 50L.

Your eyes don’t see things as they are - your eyes adjust things with a midpoint that’s not in the middle creating a gamma of something near 2.2

I think there is a lesson and an observation in the above paragraph and the deeper roots of color theory that go into making the computer systems that we use. First, the observation: “human beings perceive more contrast in dark things that in light ones.” I believe the lesson we need is one in opening ourselves to the transcendental unity of apperception - opening ourselves to the foundation of understanding itself. Another definition of understanding I found says “sympathetically aware of the character or nature of“.

How sympathetically aware are you of your camera’s subjects?

I don’t say ‘Understanding the Darkness to See the Light‘ carelessly or because it’s catchy. I say it with a firm backing of color theory and the psychological underpinnings of human perception - which we’ll delve into as this series develops.

Finally, the lesson from Gamma that we should take to heart. Our eyes manipulate our surroundings - and so we can feel free to manipulate our images. Maybe so subtly that our eyes assume no manipulation - but hopefully so perceptively that the awareness of our subjects is fully realized.

Introduction to Understanding Contrast Series

First off a tip of the writer’s hat to my college Michael Reichmann who so many times has opened my mind to the underlying reality of photographic image making, I credit his understanding series as a thematic example upon which I will build this series on contrast.

Second, this series is an inspirational and informational introduction to the very powerful workflow action that I will be releasing soon. If you appreciate the thinking in this writing, you will be pleased with the power that is put at your fingertips with this action, and it’s training materials will give you renewed appreciation of this series.

Third, this series is a response to many of the ungrounded and ‘copycat’ threads and questions I see around the internet from time to time. The tendency is to try and reproduce a style or look, instead of digesting how the subject matter interacts with a treatment to produce deeper understanding. Don’t get me wrong this isn’t negative, I learn by copying too, as have artists from all generations. I hope this article fully articulates the full process of deconstruction rather than a few photoshop steps as what I have learned on the backside of copying so that I can create better.

Have you any favorite copycat threads? Post links in the comments and I’ll check them out and discuss in the future contrast posts.

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Color Theory , Photoshop , Technical , contrast , learning
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Strobist Umbrella Specular portrait assignment details

Neil September 13th, 2007

So over on the Strobist blog he came up with an assignment called the ‘umbrella specular portrait’ detailing how to use an umbrella and the reflection it can create on the background to bring it as a design element in the photo. I don’t usually do ‘assignments’ as the paid kind are my favorite, but I was supposed to change the oil in my car and it was raining….so….when ideas flash….you gotta roll with it. (and avoid auto maintenance chores)

So this is what I came up for my final entry.

Although I think this one^ is actually my favorite, and closer to what I was hoping for although it turned out that i couldn’t get my umbrella close enough to my head to get a large enough reflection to encircle my head.

With one of my favorite sayings being ‘mind like water‘ I can’t help but adore the concept of this self-portrait. Of course the mind like water saying stems from the martial art’s notion that any action should act and react like water - with the perfect amount of response to absorb without distraction. This is a state I try to achieve when shooting, and it’s fun to try an illustrate it. The fun part is that this feels like it illustrates the artist side of the equation - that you achieve the balance of water - you are filled with the electric energy of the whole spectrum of color and potential - to respond to your subjects.

My basic idea was to use the specular reflection of the reflector on water and transform it using the interference rainbow of the oil. To do so I had to follow the standard rule to get a specular reflection which is angle of incidence = angle of reflection. However, as light is a wave, if you cause the waves to stop lining up with each other, you can get the ‘up’ part of one wave aligning with the ‘down’ part of another wave, and these can cancel out. This is called interference, and it causes a pattern of colours according to how much interference is occurring. Oil films of different thicknesses cause different amounts of interference, so you get a rainbow effect. The rainbow effect is in line with my gaudy propensity to color and contrast, and so I thought it was just right for a self portrait. Besides, since Liesl wasn’t about to lie down in a puddle of oil - who else was going to do it.

Now for the setup!

Liesl shot this one of my making the oil slick. You can see the whole batch of setups on Flickr.

A shot of the ambient light with my Photoflex 60″ umbrella, on a tripod with the Alien Bee 800 on top and the 1dsM2 on the bottom of the tripod post. The tripod with the light over and the camera under allowed me to shoot this with a 24mm Sigma 1.8 lens.

Exposure was 1/50th of a second at f/22 with an iso of 400. I believe I was underexposing ambient by 2 stops but that may have actually been 4 as I was pointing my camera at blacktop. If you look closely, concentrate, let the day’s concerns blow out of your mind with the wind - you can separate the difference between the interference and the reflection - just use your imagination and feel smart anyway!

Now my ambitious sense of design led me to believe that I could stick my head down there and I would have an oil slick halo - but as this is a 24mm lens the difference 7 inch between my eyes and the pavement disallowed me from getting that perspective (cause my head become a balloon). BUT - if I had a piece of plexi that big I could have done the shot so that the plane of rainbow oil was nearly the same as my eyes, it would be a killer halo! Look for it in the future - copy me and I’ll kill ya.