Japanese Green

I made this shot couple days ago at the street side when I was on the way to learn driving. The bright sunlight was shining on the plants creating a very good view with freshly composition of "green". However, I knew that I was not able to capture such rich color correctly and so I changed my DC's color setting to "F-Chrome" (a special color mode in this particular Japanese brand of DC providing a rich color effect simulating the characteristic of a color positive film) before making the shot. Though the result was still a bit different from what I could see, the green color captured was very vivid and rich compared with conventional color mode (without the need of further photo retouching).

This photograph recalled my days when I was working for Japanese photographers. Japanese photographers are very serious about every shots they made. They are very attention to detail including picture composition, object fine positioning, subtle lighting and even minor color difference.

Did you notice that couple of years ago when Japan was still the leader in offset printing in terms of techniques/qualities. You would find that photographs on most Japanese calendars were much more beautiful than that of others. This was especially true for nature scenery shots where the green color found on every pictures were extraordinary clean and fresh. The reason was not just because of good creative and photographic skills, but also due to Japanese's attention to "detail". This was also the such minor attention creating the difference between "good" and "better" (or even "the best").

Conventional four color printing (CMYK: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow & Black) can never achieve a good green color. Therefore, Japanese utilize "spot color" (green) on top of the four colors to achieve such brilliant results.

Such "spot" color technique is now widely adopted in color inkjet printers where you can find six or even seven colors inkjet printers with two to three special colors inks to achieve extraordinary color rendition output.