Alan Jaras is an artist/scientist who since his retirement as a industrial research scientist and microscopist has focused his energy on bridging art and science together with his research “to gain a deeper understanding of how these patterns form and how to make images that hopefully can be considered a form of art.” Using only film, and without a lens on the camera, in what Alan says could still be described as a photogram, he shoots a targeted light source through and a piece of art glass or formed plastic to capture the created refraction patterns. The results, what could be described as “images of strange microscopic or deep sea creatures or even galaxies forming in deep space,” pull at the viewers perception of digital and analog, art and science, all the while expanding our imaginations and understanding of the world around us.

I talked with Alan about his photo process, the inspiration behind it, other beautiful color effects found in nature, and how to start a fire using a flower vase.

Take the time to read through everything Alan has to say and you won’t walk away uninspired, I promise.

COLOURlovers: Hi, how are you today?

Alan Jaras: Today I feel particularly good. I live in the North West of England in the UK and over here we’ve had another wet summer, as we approach the start of autumn today the sun is shining in a clear blue sky, it definitely lifts the spirits.

CL: How do you spend you time?

Alan: I took early retirement from my work as an industrial research scientist and microscopist some years ago intending to spend more time concentrating on photomicrography, macrophotography and photography in general. However, the internet, and Flickr in particular, changed things for me. The worldwide interest in my refraction patterns or “Refractographs” as I call them has set me off in a new direction towards, what looks like, the start of a new career. I work from home and need the dark to photograph the images, so from late September until March when the sun has set and it’s dark enough for me in the evenings I can spend a couple of hours actually taking photographs. Looking directly into the viewfinder at a bright light can be a big strain on the eyes so I limit the length of time. I’ve had over 40 years training peering into microscopes in darkened rooms so I’m quite used to it, but I still want to look after my eyes. During the day I spend a lot of time trying out new ideas, experimenting with plastics, resins, paints, dyes and seeing what sort of new refraction patterns I can create. Like a scientific experiment I keep a careful record of the things I try and all the samples I produce are coded and numbered for future reference. With the interest generated on the internet there is also the need to spend quite a bit of time replying to emails and comments on Flickr.

Looking out of the study window now I can see that after all the rain the lawn grass needs cutting and the weeds are beginning to take over the garden - if the weather stays dry I’ll try to make a start later today. There’s always something waiting to be done.

CL: Can you talk about your photo process.

Alan: I only use film and traditional manual 35mm cameras - I have never used or owned a digital camera (I have nothing against them: just never felt the need for one). For my photography in general I still use cameras from the 1960’s, I don’t have any zoom lenses and I even use a hand held light meter. For my ‘Refractographs’ I don’t even need a lens on the camera, I just use a camera body as a mini darkroom to hold the film while the image is projected directly on to it. The piece of glass, or formed plastic, replaces the camera lens. I think the technique can still be classed as a photogram but whereas the conventional photogram is made in a darkroom as a contact print directly on to photographic paper using an enlarger as the light source, I use a darkened room and a distant point light source and capture the image on to 35mm colour film from which enlargements can be made. After a lot of experimentation on film types I have now settled on using tungsten rated colour slide film (Fujichrome T64). The 64 ISO (ASA) film speed means fine grain size which will give larger enlargements (40″ x 30″ is quite acceptable). For my processing I use a local professional photo lab that specialises in exhibition quality traditional enlarger hand prints, either directly from the colour film using the Cibachrome (now Ilfochrome) process or the film is scanned at high resolution for large digital prints with the associated large file size - a high resolution scan of a 35mm frame can be 250-300MB in size. For web work and evaluation I scan my own images using an Epson Perfection V700 scanner.

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Art Nouveau was an international art movement during the late 1800’s that focused on decorative arts such as glass work, interior design and jewelery, along with other departures from tradition in design, painting and sculpture. The movement was characterized by an elaborate ornate style of flowing curvilinear forms that frequently depicted leaves and flowers.

Key artist in the movement included: Gustav Klimt, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Otto Wagner, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Stanisław Wyspiański.

Although Art Nouveau took on distinctly localized tendencies as its geographic spread increased some general characteristics are indicative of the form. A description published in Pan magazine of Hermann Obrist’s wall-hanging Cyclamen (1894) described it as “sudden violent curves generated by the crack of a whip”, and this description became well-known during the early spread of Art Nouveau. Subsequently, not only did the work itself become better-known as The Whiplash, but the term “whiplash” is frequently applied to the characteristic curves employed by Art Nouveau artists. Such decorative “whiplash” motifs, formed by dynamic, undulating, and flowing lines in a syncopated rhythm, are found throughout the architecture, painting, sculpture and other forms of Art Nouveau design.

1896 Edition of the German Magazine Jugend
		This front cover of an 1896 edition of the German magazine Jugend is decorated in Art Nouveau motifs. Jugend was strongly associated with the style and the magazine’s name inspired the German term for the movement, Jugendstil (”Jugend”-style).

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Our skin plays two key roles: to protect us from the harmful UV radiation of the sun, while still taking in enough sun to produce healthy amounts of vitamin D. Because of this need, those populations who live in lower latitudes, those closer to the equator, have adapted darker toned skin able to better protect from UV radiation, while those in the higher latitudes have lighter skin to maximize vitamin D production.

Skin color is determined by the amount of melanin, the pigment of the skin, and can create colors from blue to nearly colorless which gives the skin a reddish appearance because of the blood located just beneath.

Skin Color Map for Indigenous People

While skin color is determined by genetics, besides tanning, in our modern world we have additional drivers behind the colors of skin. With globalization more people are living in areas where their skin tone is not aligned with the environment with which they live. This movement, which started with colonization and slavery, unfortunately, gives an interesting situation for anthropologist who are able to study how the skin will adapt when placed in an unfamiliar level of sun. One interesting example of this is Australia. The Indigenous population of Australia has much darker skin tones compared to the now prominent European population, and it just so happens that Australia has the highest incidence of skin cancer cases in the world, for guess who.


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With the Olympics wrapped up in China and the total medal count tallied, red seems to have won. China, who dressed completely in red, came out winning an astounding 51 gold medals, and the top 10 overall medal winning countries all include red in their national colors. So, we’re taking a look at some recent research to see if wearing the color red is really more favorable in athletics.

Seeing Color

There are two kinds of cells in you eyes that are responsible for interpreting light: rods and cones. Rods are responsible for seeing at night, only taking in a narrow range of light (only white), and making it possible to see light at a greater distance. Where as cones recognize a wider range making it possible for humans to recognize color.

Photo by koka_sexton

Many animals, including other mammals, see in different ranges of the light spectrum than humans. Our ability to see in the shorter lengths was developed by primates whose vision adapted to see red, outdoing their lemur relatives who could only see green and blue. And because it was developed as a survival skill — picking out ripe fruits, those that contain a higher energy value, red has become immediately recognizable to us.

Red Research

Researchers have found that referees favor those who wear red.


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Over the years of the modern Olympic era we have witnessed design take a forefront in the planning and execution of the event. It has seemingly gone from a casual, low key sporting event, with each venue taking their turn hosting, into a full scale media orgy of Superbowl proportions.

Cities have good reason to want to hold one of the the world’s greatest sporting events, with the potential economy boost, infrastructure developments and revitalized international attention, but for many cities hosting the Olympic games has been not always been a great success — in 1984 Los Angeles was the only city to make a bid for the games due to the massive cost overruns during the Montreal Games.

With the enormous costs that cities face to hold the games, more energy, and money, is being focused on branding in hopes at creating a memorable and rewarding event. Host countries now reach out to the best designers, architects, and artist, to create a spectacle the world will never forget, and the one symbol that will be plastered on the streets, merchandise, and computer and television screens across the globe: the logo. And while most designs have stuck close to the blue, yellow, black, green and red of the Olympic colors, we have begun to see new colors emerge from the more recent games, including the first logo to come in multiple colors, which will be seen in 2012.

Today were taking look at the Summer Olympic logos from 1896 to 2012 London along with some noteworthy facts from each games and palette inspiration from some of the more colorful posters and logos. For more info about each year of the Olympics, click on the corresponding image.

Olympic Design

The 1896 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the I Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was celebrated in Athens, Greece, from April 6 to April 15, 1896. It was the first Olympic Games held in the Modern era. Ancient Greece was the birthplace of the Olympic Games, consequently Athens was perceived to be an appropriate choice to stage the inaugural modern Games. It was unanimously chosen as the host city during a congress organized by Pierre de Coubertin, a French pedagogue and historian, in Paris, on June 23, 1894. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was also established during this congress.

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Most everyone who’s worked in any media for screen would (and should) be aware of the importance of the RGB value system. While it is a concise system for describing colors, it is somewhat difficult for us to describe the nature of a color by amounts of each channel by eye. So rather than describing the additive blend of colors, we can describe a color with HSV which breaks color down into more simplistic characteristics. Let’s look at each of these in detail:

RGB

Defined by listing how much red, green, and blue is contained in a single value. Being additive, the more of each color that is added, the brighter (and closer to white) it becomes.

While it’s helpful to denote how much of each color exists, it is not a very friendly system to describe a hue shift, saturation, or value/brightness. Try looking at a color and try to arbitrarily dictate how much of each primary color composes it. Not so easy, right?


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“thisissand.com is a website for play. It changes the pixels on the screen into digital sand that can be used as building material for cosmic landscapes, Clemens-style sand paintings, mandalas and so on.”

A joint project by the designers Johanna Lundberg and Jenna Sutela with the Flash programmer Timo Koro, who wanted to create a playground of colors and sound for people to play with them in their sandbox.

To find out a little bit more about their site I sat down with Jenna, Johanna and Timo, turned over an hourglass, and had a chat about things:

COLOURlovers: What inspired you to create This Is Sand?

thisissand.com: The project is a result of a lengthy discussion. We started off with making an animation out of visually interesting computer glitches and related sounds. In the process, we were referring to the computer as a sandbox - a place where you play with given matter, using your imagination to mold it in infinite ways. Just like that, we actually started moving towards to what thisissand.com is today.

CL: What do you do when you are not playing with sand?

thisissand.com: Graphic design, Flash programming, writing and concept design.


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Imagine hiking on a sunny mountain and witnessing an unforgettable phenomenon worthy of a Hollywood special effects team: as a bank of chilly fog rises from a couloir, your shadow grows to gigantic proportion (hundreds of feet high), surrounded by a prismatic halo.

In olden times, the spectre was considered to be of supernatural origin and fearfully ominous in nature.  Today, the phenomenon is known as a “Brocken Bow,” named after a mountain in Germany.  Like a small, circular rainbow, a foggy Brocken Bow tends to last from several seconds to fifteen minutes.  Bands of color surround the gigantic shadow at a distance of several feet.  The outermost band is red, and the others follow the order of the typical rainbow.  In some cases, a Brocken Bow is surrounded by a second bow, whose color order is reversed.  A similar phenomenon, known as a Glory, is distinguished by the fact that the bands of color touch the head of the shadow.  Glories typically sport seven bands of color and can last for hours at a time.  Sometimes Glories are surrounded by glowing white fog bows.

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The bikini has been raising blood pressures and making people blush since its modern creation in 1946. It has gone through a few changes over the years in style; different patterns, plummeting waist lines, disappearing amounts of fabric and fluorescent fishing lure-like colors, but like most things in fashion, things tend to come full circle, and designers look for something new by looking at something old for inspiration.

To celebrate these liberating two pieces of fabric, and as a reminder of the fleeting summer days, we’re taking a look at the colorful history of the bikini, Styles from then and now, and the most famous (or infamous) bikinis known in pop culture.

The Most Famous Bikinis of All Time

Brigitte Bardot Credited with creating the bikini market in the US with her provocative role in the 1950’s film ‘And God Created Woman.’

Ursula Andress The most famous bikini scene in the history of cinema, from the 1962 James Bond Classic ‘Dr. No.’ In the scene Andress ermerges from the water wearing an off-white bikini.

S.I. Swimsuit Issue The first issue was published in 1964 and is credited with legitimizing the bikini. The popularity of the annual magazine, which features supermodels in bikinis in exotic locals, has grown steadily since its first release, peaking in 1989 with the 25th anniversary issue with Kathy Ireland. In 2005 the single issue carried $35 million in advertising.

Raquel Welch “Discover a savage world where the only law is lust!” In One Million Years BC (1966), a strange caveman adventure film, Welch is seen wearing a torn, fur-lined brown leather bikini.

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That’s it. One color per day.

COLOURlovers: What is Hexday, and what was the inspiration behind it?

Jon Sykes: Hexday is “a social experiment in color picks” I guess that’s what I’d say. It’s hard to say really. It’s evolving. Originally it was probably more of a test web app. I was just starting to use CakePHP (which is awesome by the way) for my personal project web apps, and I came up with an idea that if you allowed people to pick 1 color and only 1 color every day, what would they pick. So I built a web app around the idea. We had a spurt of traffic when we first launched, then it slowed down (for a few months it was me and 1 or 2 real regulars that were the only posters), it seems to be having a resurgence now which is great and has encouraged me to spend more time in my evenings working on features. I’m constantly struggling with the natural instinct that I need to make the volume higher - sites that do well allow users to keep adding content. Hexday, apart from the sampler, you get to interact with the site once a day. That’s it. It’s really tough to keep people interested when they might only hit a sites once or twice a day. But deep down, I know I shouldn’t change that.

Hexday

If I allowed people to pick as many colors as they wanted, the whole reason for the site would be gone, it’s that forced single choice that hopefully makes people think before they post. If you want to pick endless colors or create palettes there are sites for that, you guys being top of my list, but there are a few others as well. That’s not my market. Eventually I want to make it that people can use the color they pick. I have a few users who use the color they pick each day in their own web sites (as a heading color or a background color), I exposed picks as CSS so they could do this. It’s small enough that I’m very open to requests at the moment.

CL: Hi, how are you today?

Jon: I’m doing very well indeed David, I hope you’re doing well too. It’s 5,52pm and I’ll be leaving work any second for a long weekend of sitting on the beach.

today’s colors

CL: Other than picking a color everyday, how do you spend your time?

Jon: I’m a husband and father of 1, my business card says I’m a “Senior UI Architect” which means I spend most of my days helping people build the front ends for their web apps, helping to direct, influence and eventually provide the means that users can interact with their online apps. I work at a great company called Media Hive. We’re a small agency in vibrant Red Bank, NJ.

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