Her latest book focuses on Patagonia and you will find in her portfolio a very tightly grouped photographs of Patagonia among other places. You will see photographs where the mountain peaks are touched by the peaks of lupines, or other juxtapositions of delicate and robust elements in wonderful color. She also writes essays, and I would like to comment on one of her writings, On the Color Landscape, in a complementary way. She questions, and rightly so, the lack of respect given to color landscape photography as a form of art. In her essay, Linde makes very good points about the ability of B&W to add a layer of abstraction and color drawing the viewer to the “literal” rendering of the subject. It makes a good reading, take a look at that. I would like to add the following to her observations that may (or may not) help make a case for color landscape photograph as a serious form of art, when done right of course.

Flood of Photographs

As I read the essay on color landscapes not being appreciated, I remembered Paul Strand who claimed “color is vulgar.” Of course in his time it probably was, but still remains a seductive element that can blur the distinction between “pretty” and “beautiful.” With the advent of digital photography and the wonderful technology it provides, many landscape photographs flooded the consciousness of the public with technically proficient photographs in glowing color, sometimes over the top. Although a connoisseur can filter techno-junk from color-art, for the masses this distinction is far more difficult which contributes to under-appreciation of some color landscape art.

Difficulty of color

Color is also difficult to understand and appreciate at a “non-literal” level. Some photographers, well-known ones I mean, calling themselves “colorists” added to the confusion by chasing colorful elements to photograph rather than accepting color as an existential element of life. Now, if the work of the “colorist” is art, others are easier to bundle with techno-junk.

Second-rate painting?

Photographers themselves are at some fault for accepting, even aspiring to, painting as the higher form of art, and being flattered when someone comments “your photographs look like paintings.” If painting is art, and photography a second-class artisanship, much of what it produced cannot be art, color landscape included. B&W landscape escapes this trap by virtue of the fact that most “painting” is in color.

Understanding, accepting, using the medium’s qualities

An elusive, slippery, deceiving, misunderstood, natural but yet not natural, concept color is, it defies to be pigeon-holed into narrow spaces. It is up to the photographer, photographic artist to stick to her/his guns when defining his/her art in terms of the medium used and within the qualities and limitations of it. I believe the simplicity of the photographic technology, allure of color, and admiration of nature creates much “art-noise” that makes it difficult for photographers to create a strong signal-to-noise ratio to rise above this techno-junk. With persistence, however, those photographers who understand, appreciate, and use wisely their medium to produce “photographs” that can stand on their own, without the crutches of second-class paintings will rise above the “art-noise” and be recognized.

Linde, thank you for sharing your work and stimulating my interest to respond to your photography as well as to your writing. I also appreciate the freely available PDF photo books, all seven of them. I have looked at a few quickly and will go back and study them in greater detail. Congratulations on your latest book and the message it carries.

This dialog makes me want to publish a seminar presentation I made several years ago on “Challenges of Color Photography” at Providence College. Let me find my notes and presentation material …

X-Rite ColorMunki Photo

I am amazed that many photographers, far too many of them work on a monitor with no calibration, no profiling and get surprised when they do not achieve the expected colors from their prints. I have made quite a few presentations on digital workflow, and have been preaching the importance of color management starting with the display monitor calibration and profiling. The importance of a calibrated and properly profiled display monitor cannot be overemphasized.  It is a must, period. The rest of the color-manged workflow depends on it.

I have been using a Monaco Optix-XR display calibration device that I acquired about 8-9 years ago; it was one of the better devices then. It served me well over the years until I upgraded my computer about a month ago, and its OS to Windows 7. The old software, which had not been updated for many years after X-Rite acquired Monaco, did not install on Windows 7 64-Bit OS. A replacement was clearly necessary, not for compatibility reasons only but also the availability of newer and better technology.

I sought advice from Brenda, the knowledgeable and helpful rep of X-Rite as to which one of their products would suit my needs the best. X-Rite makes close to 10 different models with a wide range of capabilities and prices and I considered i1Display series and the ColorMunki. She recommended X-Rite ColorMunki Photo (yes, it sounds a bit hokey to me too) and demoed one on my computer. I was sold on the spot. The process could not be simpler, it’s so simple a Munki can do it (sorry for the pun!)

Install the software first; it will probably take longer than the actual display calibration. Then plug in the CM (no more Munki-ing around with the long names) to an available USB port, which will trigger the installation of the hardware device driver. After it says your hardware is ready to use, start the Photo software. From this point on, it is a matter of following the on-screen instructions which even show a picture of the device with the correct dial setting and informs the user when it is set correctly or incorrectly. (There is one part that is not so foolproof as this fool was tripped by it. You need to open the sliding sensor cover at the bottom otherwise you will go through the entire process only to end up with an error message. I wish there was a hardware or software indicator that the cover was closed. But it is a very, very minor issue and I will most likely not make that mistake again.)

During the initial phases of the calibration process you will need access to the brightness and contrast controls of your display, acquaint yourself with those buttons; they are usually very hard to find and their labels are practically impossible to read. At least my monitor’s controls are. While making the adjustment on contrast or brightness as instructed by your loyal Munki software, go in small steps as it takes it a moment or two to read the new levels. After these are done, it will go through displaying and reading a series of colors on the screen and tell you that it is finished. At this point, you need to save the created profile. It suggests a name, which is fine to use. I prefer to add my monitor brand and the date of calibration to the file name so my profile names look like:

Ekin_Samsung_100704

but any name will do. I’m from the old school of computing and try to put as much information in to the file name as I can within reason. It’s a habit I developed in the days of CP/M and MS-DOS! (What do you mean you don’t know what they are?)

The next step is a visual comparison of Before-After with noticeably better After view. You will be pleased when you see the results. I have not yet even mentioned that it can profile substrates for printers with ease and is a color picker from any surface that you can touch with this Munki’s foot. Other utilities included in the package will be quite useful to people who need to decide on color combinations like on a Web site, or a magazine layout. On their Web site they offer training materials, brochures, and other information that will help the user get the most out of this product.

I love this Munki and highly recommend that you get one at your earliest convenience. They are easy to train, once you learn how to remove their “eye-patch!”

• Is it meaningful to talk about the “evolution of color” in the sense that we talk about the evolution of the planets, species?
• All the colors must have emerged spontaneously.
• If not, is there an order of appearance?
• Are there “unknown colors”? Can there be?
• Once we are aware of the idea of “color” do we know all the colors we can?
• What is the difference between “surface color” and “emitted color”?
• Was there a time when humans did not see all the colors we now know?
• Will humans see more colors one million years from now?
• Is human evolution a factor in “color”?
• If it is, is human evolution the analog for the evolution of color?
• Is there color inside a tightly sealed wooden box?
• How can we know that?
• If there is no color, what would it look like if we could observe the objects inside?

Penny for your thoughts.

1. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Colour (University of California Press, 1977).