Monday, February 15, 2010

Superman's Metropolis


Photography, when you get down to it, is simply the capture of light. Sometimes the light can be so beautiful it knocks the breath from your lungs and leaves you speachless and dumbfounded. The interesting thing is that you often don't even realise the complete magnificence of the light - our eyes tend to adapt all too well and decrease the contrast between the light and dark, in effect making the scene less powerful. Also, as darkness falls, we see less and less color. This doesn't happen to cameras (be it on film or digital). So sometimes, the image from the camera can be even more powerful than you remember it.

This image above reminds me of the strong, beautiful colors present in many comic books - Superman being the most iconic. Whereas many newer comics tend to be darker (must I really mention the legend?), Superman has always had a bright, punchy and highly saturated (at times even cartoon-ish) color palette (as can be seen when comparing the first picture on his Wikipedia page with that of Batman's).

I first considered naming the post just 'Metropolis', but I decided to be specific. After all, it is the name of a very iconic film as well as a generic name for a large city.

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