A tri-colored vision

I remember during the early days of television, when technology was nowhere near trinitron, that the black-and-white flickering images projected from electrically heated tubes were masked with a sheet of tri-colored plastic. It was a novelty, for sure, but the effect was somehow quite pleasing (although this is not to say that a few found it quite distracting.) It became popular. It was the analog world’s cheap imitation of color, and its widespread adoption served as somewhat of a precursor to the modern marvel that is today’s full-color digital TV sets. The fake color soon enough gave way to real color. In paying homage to that seemingly simple yet curious (and largely forgotten) interim innovation, I playfully adopted the tri-colored band to my fine art image of Chicago’s modern skyline, sandwiched between a band of sky and sea. I find the effect to be quite pleasing, and for a style that has been discarded years ago, it actually looks refreshing. Thanks to today’s powerful digital imaging technology, I no longer actually need to use a sheet of tri-colored plastic to shift the pixel’s colors.