Impulse: Solarize me, baby

I used to think that solarization was just some goofy technique photographers used to show how cool they are in the darkroom. (The process of generating these in a darkroom is tedious and difficult on a good day). Then, Ron Hammond said something clever while presenting Forgotten but not Gone, “Solarization is wonderful when the image is all about shape.” A light went off in my head.

Back in ‘02, I tried repeatedly to shoot photos of the land-orca fins of Magnuson Park here in Seattle. I was never happy with the results. I could not capture the otherworldliness of the place (it really does feel like you’re amidst a pod of subterranean whales).

Enter Ron’s inspiration. About 30 seconds in photoshop later and I had a photo that much better captured the mood of the place, far better than anything I had previously taken.

Since then, I’ve been wandering around shooting things with solarization in mind. I think there’s something here. They’re dark and moody. They do emphasize shape. But, I haven’t quite got it worked out yet.

The first thing I’ve learned is that a nice, medium-contrast photo is best. It gives you more planes of tone to play with. My first idea had been to shoot high contrast stuff - Gasworks Park at sunset - since I wanted the end result to be very contrasty. Not so. The images were too difficult to manipulate because the tones were compressed at the ends - either nearly white or nearly black. What would’ve been much nicer is to have a nice Gaussian bell-curve for a histogram - medium contrast with smooth graduations between tones. The smooth curve makes it much easier to control what falls in which final tonal range.

Anyway, here are my first experiments. What do you think?