Deliberate colour saturation - Cornwall
These images are photographs, but I've upped the colour saturation to levels that
are definitely over the top.
They're the result of looking at painting by artsists working in Cornwall
who use bright colours
that are a true reflection of what you see when looking at the sea in many lights.
I haven't altered the colour balance or hue, so, in the colours are just
exagerated rather than actually changed.
Many purist photographers may be horrified by this approach (as may a lot of 'normal' people),
but I've been careful to use images where I could sense the colouration that I've portrayed here.
These are experimental at the moment and should be seen as 'work in progress'.
The light characteristics of different places shows through. Even on rather dull days St Ives has a different light from Porth Kidney, which again has a different light from Sennen.
"at the end of this peninsula, which is the longest tongue of land in Europe, you are miles out into
a huge ocean. This ocean is a mirror all round. ... All that plane of water is reflecting light
upwards into, most of the time, a very humid atmosphere. So the light is then being
refracted in all directions. I called this 'multi-directional reflected light', which causes
everything in the landscape to be illuminated from every side, from every direction. ...
Its the very opposite to light in the middle of a great land mass, in the centre of France for example,
which crashes down from one side, with dark shadows on the other.
There aren't any dark shadows here at all.
Even when the light is full blast the dark shadows are themselves almost cerulean blue. All profiles,
whether of hills, houses or headlands rise up towards you, but the light also flattens them, they aren't like a sculpted form.
(Patrick Heron interviewed by David Sylvester, about light in Penwith. Tate Gallery, 1995)