When I was younger, I remember being quite fascinated by photo negatives. I would study them and try to understand the chemistry that made up a whole new and interesting world of film photography. Although I am mainly a digital photographer, a translation of the effect in post-processing by inverting a monochrome image to produce a “negative” became a fascinating endeavour. I tried this effect with a series of hi-key minimalist snowscapes entitled “Prelude To Silence” that recently won Third Place (Nature / Trees) at PX3 (Prix De Paris) 2014. You can see the result in the series I call “Asymenio” but also “Postlude to Sound” below.
I refer to these types of inverted minimalist snowscapes as “Silver Snowscapes” because the white with a touch of grey against the predominant black in these types of compositions produces a shimmering and silvery effect to the eyes. This is something a bit different in that we can fathom white trees and black skies but not black snow. The “felt aesthetic” knows no boundaries of reality when it comes to fine art and it’s interpretation and re-interpretation of what is considered beautiful. The effect, of course, can be reproduced with many other types of photographs. I have produced it with some architectural photos to get a similar effect.
