Photographs of Technicolor Cities Around the World

The flat textures and aqua-hued tones of Ben Thomas’ urban landscapes wouldn’t look out of place in a graphic novel, but don’t be fooled, these are photographs, not illustrations. Thomas loves to play with perception.

Thomas typically shoots on bright, sunny days to give his photos a flat, even feel to his photos. He uses Lightroom and Photoshop to decrease the shadows as much as possible, then plays with color balance and vibrancy to create an almost neon hue. The process, which is trickier than it sounds, took a year of experimenting to get the right combination of intense color and depth.

You ca also see these previous features of Ben Thomas work following the links:

• Anti Chroma
  
• CityShrinker 
  
• Accession
  

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Technicolor VS Cinecolor (1934)

During most of the 1930’s and 1940’s, the top two professional color processes were 3 strip Technicolor (left), and 2-color Cinecolor (right). These scenes were shot on the same year at the Chicago Century Of Progress Exposition, and show the same locations.

Needless to say, Technicolor provided unmatched color reproduction, but Cinecolor had its advantages- It was considerably cheaper (being only 10% more expensive that black and white), and it could be used on a standard studio movie camera. This made it perfect for short subjects and low budget pictures, and it remained in use until the mid 50’s.

Despite the different conditions of the clips, the difference in color reproduction it still quite evident.

(Clips via historycomestolife)

Did a Google search on the fair, and I ran into my own post….