The recent darkroom experiments with colour photograms have unexpectedly raised my level of awareness of colour when I am out walking with my camera. One of the drawbacks of digital imaging technology is the tendency to produce images with luridly over-saturated colours, either through over-enthusiastic processing by the users or their over-reliance on the software algorithms built in to modern cameras and mobile phones. The prevalence of this particularly in social media platforms has resulted in an expectation that landscapes will be vividly coloured, almost like a re-setting of the expected norm. We all however perceive colours differently and inconsistently - "in visual perception a colour is almost never seen as it really is - as it physically is" - and - "it is necessary to recognise that colour deceives continually", (Albers 1963).
The rock formations photographed for this article are near the Western end of Porth Ceiriad on the Lleyn Peninsula. The colours in life are subtle and muted and I have 'enhanced' them to a point where they are no longer true representations of what I saw but the photographs are now a better representation of their perceived effect when I was there. I doubt if I would previously have treated them in this way but the result feels acceptable, perhaps because the interaction of the almost complementary orange browns and bluish greys remains harmonious. Nobody unless they were there at that time could know the difference but have I sacrificed photographic integrity for a more pleasing aesthetic effect?Albers J (1963). 'Interaction of Color'. New Haven, Yale University Press. p1 (My edition of this is the Fiftieth Anniversary (4th) Edition of the paperback version, still in print and published in 2013).