Gone off the boil a bit

Hi

I've not been in for a while - I've been taking photos for pleasure this year.  I have created a new website www.SueAbbottEquestrianPhotography.com which I am having a great time with. It's combining my love of horses with my love of photography.  Have a look...

So I've put the course work on hold for a while.  And that suits me fine as I really want photography to be enjoyable and not an added pressure .

And if you have a look at my other blog, Coffee, Cakes and Cameras, you will see what else I have been up to !

Sue xx

Projects 32 & 33 - Colour Wheel

I have quickly put together a colour wheel collage using the photos I have now taken for these two projects and I am also reposting the graphic of a colour wheel I used a little while back for comparison.









I am quite happy initially with the colour matches, except maybe the green which needs to be a bit more vibrant I think. I still need to shoot an orange flower, but apart from that I think I'm almost there.

I will reread the chapter to make sure that I have covered off or at least understood it all!

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Projects 32 & 33 - Primary and Secondary Colours

Ok so I have been reshooting some flower photos for my colour wheel for these 2 projects. I know that the brief isn't to produce a colour wheel by the way, but as I'm no longer submitting this for assessment I am having a bit of fun along the way!

I used a 105mm macro lens to isolate the flowers, but didn't use extension tubes as I was shooting outside and it was a bit breezy.

Yellow - daffodils are everywhere and that includes in my garden!




This was the cameras auto exposure which came in at 1/250 f4. I was happy with the yellow but still tried an alternative exposure




This was shot on manual 1/250 f5.6 and is too underexposed. So in this instance I am happy to use the camera's auto exposure.

Violet - I have clumps of these pretty flowers dotted around the garden. No idea what they are - probably turn out to be weeds! But they are a nice colour...




The camera's auto exposure gave a reading of 1/800 f7.1. I considered dropping the ISO, but as the projects are about the effect of exposure on colour, I went with it... The colour in this image is quite light, but I over exposed slightly to see what happened on the next one




Manual setting 1/800 f6.3. Still a definite colour, which surprised me as I thought it would be more bleached out, but obviously over-exposed




Manual 1/800 f8. Much truer to the colour and more detail in the petals as a result I think.




Manual 1/800 f9. Again slightly darker, as you would expect by under-exposing on the camera's auto exposure setting. I think this is the most accurate colour match to the flower.




Manual 1/800 f10. Too under-exposed.

Green - tulip leaf




Auto exposure 1/500 f6.3. This is quite an accurate representation of the leaf colour but I tried under-exposing again a couple of times




Manual 1/500 f7.1 and




Manual 1/500 f8. I think the slight under-exposure of the second shot gives the best and most accurate green. I need to refer to the colour wheel to see how accurately this and the violet match.

Blue - bluebells again. Initially I shot them from the front, but the colour of the bells is still too violet. But I noticed that the top of the bell was a definite blue, so I positioned myself behind the bluebells and shot from there.




Auto exposure of 1/500 f5.6. See what I mean about the top of the bell being blue even though the bell is violet? Never noticed that before. The blue is quite bleached out in this one so I under-exposed again




Manual 1/500 f6.3 and




Manual 1/500 f7.1. This is the one which I think gives the best blue, although it has more shadows. I think the overall impression of the shot is "blue"

So I need to look at putting together my new colour wheel to see where I now have gaps. Back shortly...

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Project 32 - Primary Colours

Ok, so I had a look though my collection of photos to see if my planned colour wheel with flowers would work.




This is the starting point. The red is ok, but I want to re-shoot yellow and blue. Yellow because there are too many variations of yellow in the photo (shadows, light etc) and blue as the bluebells are a bit violet in colour in my opinion. I do like the shallow depth of field in the blue photo though, as the out of focus background provides more of the same colour without detracting from the subject.

I do like the idea of using flowers to illustrate the colour wheel, and I think it works well. Now I need to concentrate on getting shots to illustrate the colours I am after. I need to get the exposure settings for the red photo, and also remember to record the exposures for the new photos I shoot, to compare the effect of different exposures on the colour.

Ultimately after I have got the shots I need for the primary and then secondary colours, I will put together a colour wheel comprising the 6 photos.

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Red

I've been looking through my photos and found this one which I may be able to use to illustrate "red"




It's one of a poppy that I shot two summers ago. I have more photos from the series, but this is one of the clearest for the colour, helped enormously by the back-lighting.
Anyway it's there to use for the project if I need to.

I have also been looking at the colour wheel and I have downloaded a couple of examples from the web to put on here for reference :




and...




which shows primary, secondary and tertiary colours. These projects are concerned with primary and secondary colours only.

I think my red poppy illustrates the red in the first colour wheel quite well.

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Green

I tried to photograph something to illustrate "green". In the garden at this time of year, pretty much everything is green - grass, leaves, buds - so I headed out into the garden thinking "easy". Actually, not so easy as it happens.

I think I have said before that in NZ the light quality was such that you could see "a million" shades of green in the trees. Well it turns out that you can see tens, maybe even hundreds of shades of green in foliage. So leaves have turned out to be not quite an ideal subject for this project!




This was the "out of the camera" shot of (I think) foxglove leaves, which came in at 1/100 sec f4. I thought the green was too light overall so shot again in manual mode.



1/100 sec f5.6. And this is undoubtedly too dark. But I do think that some of the "greens" represent the green I am after.

Because the subject has many leaves, at all different angles, shadows are being cast which are affecting the brightness of the image. I think if I continue with the idea of foliage and flowers, I need to use a macro lens to pick out a small area of the subject. Lighting, using natural light, should be easier on a small single surface too.

I'll have another go......

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Colour still...

I have been giving more thought to the subject matter I shall be photographing to illustrate primary and secondary colours. I have decided that I really want to stick to a theme for these, and I played around with some ideas in my head:

material swatches
fruit
veges
flowers
shoes

I still think that the best option for me is to use flowers. I know it's not going to win any awards for originality as an idea, but I do (did) enjoy flower photography, and it's always a good excuse to brighten up the house with flowers... However, I may struggle with blue and possibly green flowers, although I may cover off green by allowing foliage. Blue - hmmmm bluebells will be out soon, but they aren't the blue I need to illustrate. I will have to think about that - I know you can get some cultivated blue heather, or perhaps I try dried flowers for the blue. Not very feng-shui !

I am becoming hooked on Instagram too. It's fun when you get messages through to say that someone has liked your photo. My user name in Plodder - swing by and have a look if you get chance...

Colour

Ok so I've been looking through the coursework and giving Colour some thought. Like I said, Colour was the section which excited me the most on this course, although I am not entirely sure why. I used to have my own darkroom and printed my own black and white prints from there for quite a few years. Given the choice I would always go for b&w shoots. The family portraits on the walls are all b&w. I love flicking through our old family photos - b&w of course.

However, we lived in NZ for a few years and the light quality there is incredible. And this means that the colours in nature there are stunning, the clarity is amazing. I have never seen so many shades of green in trees. The sky was more blue than I could imagine.

Whilst I am not really one for photoshopping and edits, I am now enjoying using the camera's manual setting to obtain truer colours while shooting. ( Also I have become a fan of Florabella actions, and love the subtle changes which can alter the mood of the image completely.)

I reread the section in the course book which reminds us that there are three qualities which define colour:

- hue (say red, blue etc)
- saturation (pure, intense, saturated -----> dull, weak, unsaturated)
- brightness (very bright ------------------> very dark)

I also gave thought to the Primary colours (red, yellow, blue) and Secondary colours (orange, violet and green) and the subject matter I might use to illustrate these colours in the next few projects. I had a thought that I could also do a "library" of the colours, or create a colour wheel, by using single flowers in each of the colours. I could also create a rainbow effect in this way maybe... As I am now completing the course just for me, I may tailor some of the projects to the kinds of photography that I most enjoy.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm...

Found it

I went out to the garage and, sure enough, in one of the filing cabinets was my OCA folder for TAoP. So I've had a flick through and found that I was working on project 31 building a library of photos for colour. The next few projects are to take photos for the primary colours and then the secondary colours.

I remember that the "Colours" section was the one I was looking forward to, so hopefully it will help that I am on that section as I am starting up again.

We took the dogs out to Sandringham today for a walk and I took my camera with me. Didn't take loads of photos, but a few, and toyed around with composition and exposure. Get me !!

A year on...

... and loads has happened - not all of it good, actually most of it was crap. But I am still here. Well, in a different place actually, as we moved house at the end of 2011. Just a couple of miles up the road, and back into the village where we used to live before we went travelling. I have learnt a lot about myself in the last 12 months, and a lot about those around me.

And I've had a total career change.

Over the last 12 months I barely picked my camera up at all, often I went out without it. We even went for a long weekend in Amsterdam and during the whole time there I only took 4 photos. Apart from that I think the only photos I took were of the kids on their birthdays blowing out the candles on their cakes - a bit of a photo tradition.

I had lots of long conversations last year with a new friend who helped me immensely. We agreed that we knew I would be feeling better when I started taking photos again.

A month or so back I was in the car with my husband, and we were driving down a narrow lane near here, and I said "What a fantastic picture that would be if I had my camera here.". It was simply a view down the lane, with hedges on both sides and some puddles. But the lane was twisty and the low winter sunlight was catching the puddles so beautifully. As we drove on I saw more views that I knew would photograph well. I knew I was getting better.

My husband suggested that I buy the camera that I had been after for ages. A Canon 5d Mk11. After all I had been working for months and we hadn't touched my money. I bought it.

Since then I have been back looking at the OCA website. I'm really drawn to the People and Place course. I have obviously dropped out of the TAoP course in as much as I won't be getting it assessed any more. But I think I shall pick it up again and work through at my own pace. I'll post on here, but I expect it'll be in fits and starts again. I'm not putting myself under any pressure to complete it all. I am going to do it for the fun of it. And if I enjoy it, then I'll think carefully about doing the People and Place one.

So I need to re-read this blog, and then I need to find all my coursework which I've not seen since we moved, and I need to rediscover the fun in photography.

Here goes...