July 6, 2004: Fireworks Inverse
To create this effect, I applied an inverse adjustment layer in Photoshop. Then I added a selective color adjustment, specifically messing with the black, white, and neutral color tabs. Finally, I bumped up the color saturation to +15, and then flattened and saved the file. [Related: watertowers inverse, Queens inverse, Spirograph inverse, more Spirograph inverse.]
Comments
Dark fireworks on a bright sunny day. Kinda spooky... cool!
I grudgingly like these.
coming from sac, that's big praise!
i was messaging with eliot today about the inverse function in photoshop. i said it struck me as being the most real of all the manipulations you could do, b/c it's the closest to the stuff you'd do in the dark room- negative work, solarization, etc. he said that "real" was just semantics, and he only cared about "good." i said that since realness is good, at least to me, the inverse is the most good of all the manipulations. then he said i was a photoshop biatch and signed off.
I'm with Eliot here. Just because there's an analog way to do something doesn't make it any more "real" when your tools are digital. Inverse is an artifact of the weird way analog photography worked, not anything inherently natural to do to a grid of brightness and color information.
Brilliant idea!
mike makes an interesting point- but i think that there is something pure about the inverse- a sort of minimum level of intervention in the image- the pixels are simply flipped, as opposed to changed, as they are in the filters. i think it is a mistake to eschew manipulation out of hand- the best documentary photographers, like gursky, manipulate when it suits them.
these are just tooooooooo f'ing hot!
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