Colour Relationships 2

Colour Relationships 1

This exercise wasn't as easy as I had thought.  Finding the colours in the right balance proved to be a challenge. I spent many days looking for the perfect balance in situations around London rather than setting up a still life controlled by me.
I also learned that it is not always beneficial to underexpose to get a richer colour.  For example, orange is richer when slightly underexposed, however this can make skin colour unacceptable.
I took loads of pictures until I got the selection below.

Exhibition - Contemporary South African Photography

This exhibition on at the V&A really spun my wheels. These photos jump off the walls at you.
What was it about this work, that made more impact on me, than the spectacular photos at the Sony Awards?
I'm drawn to work that has makes a strong statement. Tells a story. Has emotion. This body of work has all of this. The work was varied, each photographer had chosen a different subject, yet there was a similar theme running through the work making you think about life in South Africa for different groups of people. The Hyena Men by Pieter Hugo is so macho. The street chic portraits by Nontsikelelo Veleko reminded me of the young trendy Japanese. Jodi Beiber's images of women in their underwear in their homes really showed how stroppy/confident these woman are. A powerful comment on body image.

It is work like this that I would feel proud to create. Making the pictures talk to you. Having the viewer feel strong emotions, whatever they are: happy, angry, sad, just as long as it is not nothing.

Problem fixed

Another photographer told me to take my laptop to THE PRINT SPACE in Kingsland Raod to see if they could sought out my colour issues.
They calibrated it and wow for the first time I now have accurate colour. AND they did it for free.

Thanks guys.

Perfect timing.

Exhibition - Sony World Photography Awards

Saw the Sony World Photography exhibition at Somerset House on the weekend. 105,000 entries. Makes it seem impossible to be selected. Many truly superb photos taken by extremely talented photographers. However within a few days I couldn't recall more than a couple. Why is that? Too many? Or too varied?
I think an exhibition of just one artist or one theme has more impact on the viewer. The work I saw in Hong Kong has certainly made more impact on me and made me think more about my work.

Have started scribbling notes on pictures I am planning.

Art in Hong Kong

On my recent trip to NZ I stopped over in Hong Kong. Spent a day visitng the galleries in Hollywood Road. Trinkets and antiques are popular with tourists but if you are visiting, go to the galleries. Well known and established artists sit alongside new and emerging artists.
Among the artists who really stood out for me were painter,Lin Yingzhao. The light and shadow in his works are breath taking. I know that sounds o.t.t. but I just stood in front of his paintings with my mouth open. The colour and light are perfect.

This one of the lemons was my favourite.
You felt as though you could touch the folds in the table cloth and feel the sunshine pouring in through the window.
The Connoisseur Gallery has thumbnails of his latest work.

Since I started looking at lots more paintings and less photographs I'm seeing light and colour differently. The painters, whose work stands out for me, really do have an incredible understanding of light and colour.




Another artist whose work excited me was Ricardo Mazal. A Mexican artist whose work is a combination of photography, digital sketching and painting. The exhibition, KORA, was the result of his pilgrimage to Tibet. (Kora is the name of the 33-mile trek around the peak of Mount Kailash). You can see his work at the Sundaramgallery along with their describtion of what influenced his work.

What excited me was the colour and the texture. I'm sure being Mexican influenced his use of colour. When I visited Mexico many years ago, if asked to describe the place in one word, without hesitation it would be COLOUR.
His work is so vibrant. I'd love to have this on my wall.
How fortunate for me to see works focusing on colour at the same time as I am studying colour. What goes with what and proportions stood out for me as well. Looking at this reminded me of the work I saw in Barcelona earlier this year. I commented on the work of William Scott and how I felt his use of colour just didn't work. Seeing Ricardo Mazal's work reinforced for me the choice of colour, the hue, vibrance, amount, placement and texture make or break an image.

I'm also seeing a common thread in the work that really inspires me. Light, colour and focusing on one theme. (that last one will make my tutor happy as she is trying to get me to do this.)
I am trying.

Primary and Secondary Colours

For this exercise we are to find and photograph the three primary colours and three secondary colours of the standard colour circle. Decide if the truest colour is achieved by altering the exposure.

I love colour and prefer taking colour pictures to black and white. I am still having issues with achieving the right colour on my screen and what I print. Given these constraints I have attempted to get as true a colour as possible.
As a generalisation my preference is to increase saturation in colour, which can be done at the time of taking a picture by slightly underexposing.

Primary colours red, yellow and blue:
Red rocks. I find that to get that vibrancy of red underexposing works. This basket of vegetables was unexposed by third of a stop. Photographing sunset or sunrise is an example of how the redness benefits from under exposing. Hence why the best pictures are underexposed to the point where everything else is a silhouette.

Yellow does not work the same way as red. Underexposing these flowers made them take on an orange hue. For this photo I have overexposed the flowers by a third of a stop. The background is underexposed. Yellow has so many shades/hues that you really need to look carefully at how to treat it. Yellow also seems to reflect other colours around it. I found it could easily take on a green hue and in some lights can easily burn out.

I gave myself a difficult challenge in the blue picture. Dark blue deck chairs and a nice blue sky. The contrast is really to great. I have metered for the grey of the building so the sky is still blue but there is detail in the deck chairs. Filters would help out here. Also I would usually photoshop to deepen the blue in the sky. Blue is a colour that does become richer by a little under exposing. If the sky is that nice vibrant blue I will use it to meter from as it is similar to mid grey.

Secondary colours, green, violet and orange:

Green can be difficult as I discovered in the previous exercise photographing the green door. It can very quickly look grey. I looked for an area of vegetation that had several shades of green in it. Underexposing gave the truest colour. I probably could have gone even darker.

Violet. This was a challenge. Not the easiest to find in a large amount. I grabbed this chap from the street and convinced him to stand next to the grey wall for this shot. The grey has a blueness to it and similar hue to the violet/purple of his trousers that made this work. The best shot was the correctly metered one.

Orange proved the most difficult to get an accurate colour. I found lots of orange, although most of it was the fluro variety which very quickly looked red. Even this final picture, overexposed by a third of a stop, still looks redder than it should.

Peter Greenaway

On a brighter note, last Friday I attended the V&A organised event to hear Peter Greenaway talk about the Language of Display.
My favourite director, the man is a genius. Hearing some of his new ideas and seeing clips of some of his new work was so inspiring.
He is making paintings come alive with light and sound. Filling spaces such as the Veanria Reale in Turin with projected people on the walls, so you enter the castle and feel as though you are stepping back to another time with people all around you.
His visual ideas of changing the frame, not being restricted to a rectangle screen that we all sit in front of, but have different sizes and shapes that we interact with.
I will go and revisit some of the great paintings and try and see them moving. With different light.
He is very inspiring in getting you to see things that don't fit the usual box. Think outside the square.

Colour Strength

Beginning the new module on colour has created a number of problems for me. I have taken the photos for the first two exercises but have had computer and printer issues to try and resolve.
My fancy laptop with the great monitor that comes with a built in calibrator has been giving me bizarre colours. My printer is clearly confused and adds its bit to the melange. Having spent yet another fortune on getting someone to fix it has confused it even more.
I've had my computer screen replaced twice, graphics card replaced, printer replaced. Still things are not working as they should be. After the last 'expert visit' of 5 hours, I have decided I need to become an expert myself.
I am hoping I'll learn a bit more through this course. I am going back to d o the Epson course again.
I have found a great website:
http://www.gballard.net/psd.html
He has a great image you can download to make sure your colour settings are ok. Plus lots of useful information.
I have a couple of new books to help me understand colour. Wow there is so much to learn.
Colour by Victoria Finlay. About her discovery of the origins of colour and the countries they originate from.
Colour by Edith Anderson Feisner. This one is all about the theory of colour. Expands on the notes that I downloaded from the OCA site.

Finally my first exercise of a green door looks like green to get me started.
The images below are listed in order of the correct exposure, then 1/3 stop under exposed, 2/3 underexposed. Followed by 1/3 over exposed and 2/3 over exposed.

What we see from this is that exposure can change the colour. Underexposing darkening a colour and over exposing lightening a colour. This is useful to understand as there will be occasions when you want to deliberately manipulate an image in this way. Taking a photo of a sunset comes to mind. Under exposing to get the most out of the red of the sky and forgoing detail in the rest of the image.

Feedback Assignment 2

My tutor has given me positive feedback on assignment 2 in particular my use of lines to explain the images.
She has suggested an edit featuring these images.

Below are the images for the assignment grouped in three blocks.

The first two a single point and two points. These images are self-explanatory.

The next group are those that show implied lines and shapes. I have regrouped them in a collage to clearly show the aspect of design in each image.


The third group is those of rhythm and pattern. I've put the pattern between the two rhythm pictures.
I hope edit a presentation closer to what Moira has suggested.