"The Crossing at 7th and Stonewall"

I hope everyone had a great pride. I was unable to make it to a pride (there's no time!!) but I've had a lot of fun putting together my own little pride scene. If you enjoy it too:

10 limited edition prints for sale (really fancy silver halide print)
Budget options on RedBubble
Download a FREE phone wallpaper here

Designing with a Rainbow

The rainbow is our design convention for the LGBQTI+ community, largely due to its historical use in the Pride flag. The flag was created by Gilbert Baker in 1978, and it was originally composed of eight colors, each representing a different aspect of life and humanity: hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for art, indigo for harmony, and violet for spirit.

Unfortunately, designing with rainbows is very, very difficult for a couple reasons:

Color Harmony: the foundation of color theory is color harmonies, where certain colors are perceived by humans to work well together because of their relationship on the color wheel. But the rainbow has everything, making rainbow designs sometimes feel chaotic since the human eye struggles to find a harmonious balance.

Color Hierarchy: human vision is excellent at measuring changes in contrast and value (how light/dark something is), but we lose this ability when our visual systems have to process many colors. When too many colors have to compete for our attention, it can be difficult to establish a clear hierarchy.

Designing with a rainbow is a complex issue with many possible solutions. Here's what I ended up doing:

The luminance of white is too close to the luminance of these deeply saturated rainbow colors. Putting the rainbow on a dark background resolves this, giving greater contrast and making the colors "pop." Reintroducing a little white on top gives depth, and by adding the intermediate colors we breakup the boundaries of the rainbow for a more seamless blend of color.

Wow, it kind of looks like a really gay crosswalk, doesn't it?

Environment Scouting

I looked at gay crosswalks around the world to find one that effectively used the rainbow, and it led me to New York's 7th and Stonewall. The location was perfect. Great use of light/dark with the complete rainbow, iconic street sign in view, historically significant as well (the birthplace of America's LGBT movement).

I projected the satellite image into my 3D software and modeled a few landmarks, then just had fun trying to create a scene around it.

Composition Check

More classical composition techniques. Lots of fibonacci spirals, golden triangles, and dynamic symmetry. This time I focused on creating implied triangles to draw your attention to the very center of the frame, where my avatar is wearing an inclusive pride thong.

But there's a lot going on, it's hard to stay in the middle. The fibonacci spiral leads you through a group of people crossing the street, each with their own stories to tell.

My past few pieces have used a simulated telephoto lens with a full-frame sensor to create images that felt isometric. The lack of subject separation made the image feel too crowded, so I decided to try a medium format sensor by emulating a Hasselblad with a 300mm lens. The result is more clear subject definition and a depth that seems plausible but still manages to cram lots of action into the frame. (The animation above is going between the Medium and Full-Frame views).

Wishing you a happy pride, thank you for reading!

I had a lot of fun working on this. If you enjoyed it too, please consider:

Supporting me by buying a limited edition print (so very fancy)
Buying a budget print on RedBubble
Downloading a FREE phone wallpaper here

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