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 !!