I Think In Pictures: Oversaturation turns dirty, ugly urban textures into Modern Art

About a year ago, I was walking around in my city taking pictures of things like stained concrete, stone walls and rusty metal. Anything that looked decayed for use as "stock textures," to manipulate or alter somehow in my digital artwork later. But at the time I wasn't sure how I would use them.

Today as I was playing around with these images in Photoshop, I discovered that simply over-saturating these images creates an explosion of hidden color. The effect looks very Andy Warhol -inspired, like Pop Art. Over-saturation is a photographic term which means too much color. Usually the effect is undesirable in photography. But the subjects I chose for the photos are very plain, boring stuff, things people walk by all the time and don't notice. This almost gives a vibrant new life to the ugly parts of the city people would rather not look at. I find a certain beauty in old decaying things though. Maybe it's just me.

I like the way these turned out, some really do look like modern art paintings. Below are the before and after comparisons.

...By the way, I've read in science books that the image on the right side is more how the world looks as seen through the eyes of birds, certain insects and reptiles (and possibly dinosaurs). Their eyes have more color receptors than ours do and they can see wavelengths of light that we can't...so they can see colors we don't even have names for.

BEFORE AFTER