When looking at Marseille’s old harbor from our high perched balcony, I noticed for the first time that all the shadows on the street indeed appeared blue. What I had taken as a “figure de style” from provencal painters- such as the sometimes “over-the-top” violet shadows of the impressionists – proved to be the simple truth if looked upon from the right vantage point.
This reminded me of an experience I had many years ago, when the production manager of one of our garden books decided to diminish the saturation of one of my photographs on which a mountain in South Africa appeared bright blue due to the atmospheric perspective, stating that “there are no such things as blue mountains”. Then again, this guy came from a place in the north of Germany were there are no mountains at all…
Nowadays, I feel like rising the saturation of the blues in order to “translate” how intense I see them, but this, of course, may be subject to change in the future.
