I remember reading in one of Ansel Adam’s books that he was only truly happy about one of his exhibitions because the walls were painted olive.

Adams reasoning was that olive is close to mid-grey, and if one wishes to evaluate the true blacks and whites of one’s prints, then putting them on a mid-grey background is the most ideal situation.

I paraphrase with Adam’s words. I may have got some of the detail wrong, but I think I got the essence of what he was saying correct.

I am often told that my images are just white, and they do not have any colour to them. Everyone is welcome to say what they want, but I have found that when I place them on a mid-grey background, it’s much easier to see that the whites are off-whites. That there is colour in my hi-key work.

This is why I have changed the background colour of this very website. I felt that the black background was causing myself and I am sure many others, to be unable to discern these off-whites in my work.

Fact of the matter is, that adjacent colour affects our perception of a colour we are looking at. Which can be nicely illustrated in the picture of a bowler hat. The yellow square (right side of the hat) and the brown square (left side of the hat) are actually the same colour. Even though we perceive this colour differently. The magic is in the surrounding colours. When you darken the colours around a colour, that colour appears brighter, as does the yellow square on the right side of the hat.

So, depending on the background colour of your website, your images may be interpreted incorrectly. As I think mine were.

I got tired of folks telling me my images had no colour, but I decided to change the background colour of my website to grey, simply because was getting more and more frustrated by not being able to see the subtle hues I had spent a lot of time crafting, being obliterated by a dominant black background.

If you have the time, and wish to go back to my galleries, you may find that you can see colours and nuances that were not obvious when this website’s background colour was black.