Assignment 3-Colour
This section of the course has required me to look at the colours that I see when I take an image. I have had to think for just a second more before I pressed the shutter. I suppose that this is what this course is about. There are images everywhere and within those images are great images just waiting for me to see.
This assignment required me to take 16 images that showed my understanding of the following
• colour harmony through complimentary colours.
• colour harmony through similar colours.
• colour contrast through contrasting colours.
• colour accent using any of the above.
As I said earlier for a previous exercise it would have been simple for me to get things that had been pained the colours that I needed. Fruit, paper, plastic cartons etc but would these have had the right colours to match against the colour chart.
- Colour Chart from the Internet
So I set out to get as many natural colours as I could , this was harder than I thought. In the end I had to take images of manufactured colours. But it was still very difficult to get the images that I required.
Here are my Images for this assignment
Colour Harmony through complementary colours.
Complementary colors are those colors that are opposite one another on the color wheel.
Orange and Blue
This image took me some time to capture as I had to wait for a section of blue sky to appear behind the only orange pod on the wheel. I was going to crop off the top of the image but later I thought that the wheel was a nice curve so this image contained a section from a previous exercise.
Red and Green
This image was taken at a restaurant in London. I waited for a couple to finish lunch then I got the shot. As the green plants made up a large section of the foreground I focused on the red chairs in the centre of the seating area. This is a mixture of natural green and man-made red.
Orange and Blue
Another Orange and Blue image, again a shallow depth of field concentrates the eye on the post. Taken at Waterloo Station in London.
Red and Green
I sat at the side of this road and just waited for a vehicle to pass that had the colour combinations that I needed. This image contained red and green. I thought that there may be two pictures here the red on his helmet together with the green jacket and the green jacket with the bike frame. After looking again at the shot I left it. I thought that there was not enough red on his helmet and this would be an accent rather than a complementary illustration.
Colour Harmony through Similar Colours
These colours are those near each other such as red and orange , green and blue and yellow and green.
Blue and Green
This image was also taken at Waterloo Station. I liked the white line around the circle splitting the colours up.
Orange and Yellow
Natural orange and yellow flowers, I wanted more natural colours like this but they were hard to find.
Red and Orange
I chose this image so I could capture the colours on either side of the red section. At first I cropped the image to remove the blue but it removed a bit of the window and I did not like the result, so I changed it back.
Blue and Green
A Natural green plant in a blue pot. I liked the shape of this image. It was outside the front door of a hotel. Half and half blue and green. But I think that I like the first image better with the green spot.
Colour Contrast through Contrasting Colours
These are colours spaced a third of the way around the colour chart. They include as examples blue and red and green and orange.
Red and Violet
The markings were on the front of a van. Against the white background they really stand out. Although I think that the violet was not one of my better finds.
Yellow and Red
This image was captured at Worthing Beach. As I composed the shot the bird landed. I have kept it in just to add a little interest. After I printed the image off I looked at it again with the yellow post running from the top to the bottom, but again I liked the bird on the top. The two white blocks in the centre of the circle are a bit of a distraction.
Violet and Orange
This image was taken at Victoria Train Station. The cases really stand out against the orange. I think that the grey sides of the bags help a little as they act as a buffer between the colours.
Violet and Green.
This image with a natural green and a man-made violet caused me great problems and after trying for some time to get the balance right I ended up cropping a lot of the image away. After my cropping I wasn’t left with much so I changed my mind again and left some of the brick wall in. The violet line also draws you into the image so again I thought the image was a mixture of two projects, lines and colour.
Colour Accent.
This was a difficult section and caused me the most problems. I seemed to be able to find one nice colour be there was never enough of the right background colour.
Here are my images for this section
Yellow on Green
I saw this image in Guildford. I am the first to admit that the topic is not the greatest but I liked the way that the yellow stood out against the green background. After I had printed the image I had a further thought the company must have had people designing the bin and picking the colours. They would have to keep the yellow but the background could have been any colour. Was the green picked because of its position on the the colour chart or because green seems to be the colour of recycling?
- Red and Black
I saw the above image and as I took it I wondered what my tutor, Mr Taylor, would think. Colour accent, where one colour sits against another colour, well is black classed as a colour? I also messed about with the image to remove some of the distractions around the driver but the results were poor. In the end I left the image as it was. The car was moving at speed so I had to pan the camera as the car moved across the frame. Another skill that I have had to learn since I started the course.
Orange on Blue
A further image of the same train as in the picture above. The first image I took was a close-up of the orange line but I did not like the result. Although the train steps and rubber are dirty they added detail to the image that I liked.
Violet on Yellow
This last image was taken on the South Bank in London. The first image I took was a close-up of the 4 with a yellow background, although it matched the requirements of the task I did not like the shot. There was not enough interest for the viewer.
I pulled back and tried to capture the steps going up and as soon as I did I saw the two white lights , the implied triangle and the diagonal lines running across the centre of the image, it was just so much better. It was a simple image but it gave me a lot of pleasure both in the initial finding and in the end result.
Well they are my images for my third assignment. I will be posting them in the next few days. This project has taken up most of my weekends as I have been busy at work. The dark evenings have given me time to read and do research on the internet about colour and how it works in images.
I am also looking at images in magazines in a different way, now not only do I look for points, lines and position now I look at the colours and I try to see how the photographer got natural looking contrasting colours.
My next Assignment, number 4, is about light. This has come at the right time as the days are getting longer. I hope you enjoy my images.