Wednesday 11 May 2011

Colour relationships




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One photograph was taken for each combination of primary and secondary colours in the following proportions orange:blue 1:2,red:green 1:1 and yellow violet 1:3. As stated these combinations were not that easy to find and I had to crop the photographs to get closer to these proportions.

The top photographs of the church, the festival performer and the wheelbarrow all feature colour combinations that appeal to me. The photograph of the church featuring blue, red and yellow is probably technically imbalanced but I think it makes the photograph more striking. The photograph of the performer is also imbalanced featuring unusual colour combinations of red, yellow,pink and purple but I still think it works because of the tension of the imbalance of the colours.
I think the photograph of the wheelbarrow is much more subtle but I think the yellow accents in it work.

In conclusion this has been a useful exercise with regard to colour relationships. It has been interesting to learn that to make the most of colour combinations that it helps to take the brightness of the colour into consideration when determining ratios of colour in a photograph. However unbalanced colour ratios can sometimes provide a more interesting photograph.




Monday 9 May 2011

Control the Strength of a colour









This exercise demonstrates how the strength of a colour is affected by changing exposure. These photographs were taken using a shutter speed of 1/125 and the following apertures:-f 3.60,4.00,5.00,6.3,7.10. The hue in the pictures remains the same but the brightness of the colour in the photographs has varied significantly with the changing exposures. As expected the more over exposed the shot is the lighter the colours appears and conversely the more under exposed the shot is the darker the colour appears. This was a useful reminder about how changing the exposure of a photograph can change the brightness of a colour.

Wednesday 4 May 2011

Andy Goldsworthy Exhibition

I went to see Andy Goldworthy's exhibition in Haddington a couple of months ago. He is a renowned environmental artist who creates sculptures from brightly coloured flowers, icicles and leaves, mud and pine cones, snow, twigs and thorns.
He uses photographs to capture the essence of his work. He states "as with all my work, whether it's a leaf on a rock or ice on a rock I'm trying to get beneath the surface of things. Working the surface of a stone is an attempt to understand the internal energy of the stone".
The exhibition I saw of his work featured some of his classic photographs which included ice and leaf constructions. The photographs were very different from anything I have seen before and a fascinating insight into how nature can be manipulated to produce very unusual and stunning images whilst portraying the energy of nature.