In the last post I promised to discuss a series I am working on called, Yellow Becomes Blue. The root of the idea for the series is my desire to expand the idea of seeing and color. Many animals see differently than we do. They can see into the infrared and UV range for example. In space exploration scientist can use radio waves to see things invisible to the human eye. Also color is a phenomenon the takes place purely in the mind. According to scientist “color” does not exist in reality. Color is just part of the electromagnetic spectrum interacting with the rods and cones in your eyes to produce a sensation in your brain. It is possible to use lasers to stimulate our rods and cones directly to create color. Guess what, scientist have done just that. They created a new color called “Olo” that is not naturally occurring and cannot be seen with the naked eye. This new color was created by using a platform called Oz Vision and a laser system to stimulate specific cone cells in the retina, resulting in a highly saturated blue-green hue (Science|AAAS).

I have always liked the negative image. This stems back to my film days in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. I think different aspects of the image stand out when it is a negative and you read it a little differently. It takes longer to read and understand and thus stays with you. Richard Misrach made a series of negative images called Color Reversal back in 2007. The name of the series could have been a little bit more imaginative but still a really interesting series of photographs. I did notice that in negative images the shadow areas are blank and lack any sort of color or tint. What I am doing in my series is adding some tones to those areas to make them a little more unique. As an example, in the image below I added the red tones on the left side and some warm yellowy tones in the background.

The name of this post is Color Switch. That was what I was originally going to call this series (and I still might. It is a work very much in progress). That title comes form my very favorite Korean pop star IU. She has a YouTube show called Palette where she interviews fellow Korean pop stars and actors. In one continuing segment she trades songs with the guests. They sing one of her songs and she sings one of their songs. It is my favorite part of the show. The name Color Switch was actually thought up by the group New Jeans. On the very first segment IU asked the group for ideas on what to call this new part of the show and the group came up with the name Color Switch to compliment the name of the show Palette.

You never know where inspiration will come from. Don’t be afraid to read widely and to like what you like with no shame. I am an older gentleman with a crush on IU!