Colour

Colour

Definition & Theory

Colour: The property possessed by an object of producing different sensations on the eye as a result of the way it reflects or emits light.
Saturated colour: The term hue refers to the colour of the image itself, while saturation describes the intensity (purity) of that hue. When colour is fully saturated, the colour is considered in purest (truest) version
Muted colour: When you take a colour tone and you mix it with white or grey, so it dulls it down to make the colour less bright or mute.
Complementary colours: Pairs of colours which, when combined, cancel each other out. This means when combined they produce a grey-scale colour like white or black. When placed next to each other, they create the strongest contrast for those particular two colours.
Analogous colours: Groups of three colours that are next to each other on the colour wheel, sharing a common colour, with one being the dominant colour, which tends to be a primary or secondary colour and a tertiary.

Colour affects us emotionally with different colours evoking different emotions

This photo is by David LaChapelle and it shows a young Britney Spears. There is a lot of colour in this image. Most of these are colours are bright, the main colours you can see are reds, yellows and blues. These colours make the viewer feel happy as the colours are vibrant and people are smiling in the image. 

This is an album cover of a blues album. Blues music is known as soulful so the album will need to present that. Blue is the colour of this image and can make people feel calm and will then listen to John Coltrane's music in depth. Also, the look of Coltrane's face is quite emotional and thoughtful, almost sad, which compliments the whole aspect of the album.

Research of photographer

My research will be on Robert Cartwright. Robert Cartwright is a professional wedding and corporate event photographer based in London with a passion for street photography and urbex. He also specialises in portraiture. His work has a variety of different themes and types of photography. Below is just a view of his work that includes colour.

(A01: Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding)

The above images are all very basic and easy photographs that I feel I could achieve in Harlow. The first image is of some lights but by using the shutter speed setting on the camera the light has been made to look dragged and stuck in place. The second image is a more dark photograph. Even though your eyes draw to colour of the yellow lines, the darkness or shadows round the edges add a sort of spooky/scary sense. It is as if Robert Cartwright waited for someone to walk past so he could capture this photo. The shadow of the man and the way it is all dark around him, it is as if Robert is trying to show that there is a darker, greater person in all of us - hinting that everyone has a bad side but some are bigger than others. The third image is of a man selling flowers, this shows a man selling flowers in Columbia on the street market. This shows how people make money and he seems to be yelling to get attention from possible buyers. The last image was also from the Colombian Street Market, this shows the natural feel of a street. The leaves have most likely been cut off the plants and the rubbish is from the locals or visitors. Robert Cartwright has his own website and he uploads all of his images. He has a wide range of images which are all very inspiring to me. The images that I have included on this page are the ones that stood out to me because they show different kind of colours, he shows bright/vibrant colours and cool tone colours.

Image bank

The following images were added as part of my visual research..

The above images is a collection of colour images, there is used of saturated colours and muted colours. These images are all very achievable, because they are all on a beginner level and I am a beginner photographer so I should attempt to take similar photographs. These images are edited to make the features and colours either brighter and darker. The first image are of parrots which are already very colourful, so their aspect of colours make the viewer happy. The second image was edited so one strawberry is red and the rest are dark, black and white, the editing makes the colour of the one strawberry obvious. The last image was supposedly taken in London, the person who took this and edited this made it so the landscape is in focus but the focus is on the telephone boxes because they are the only things in colour. I am mostly influenced by muted colours because the photo is underexposed and looks more calm or sad - depending on what is in the image.

(A01: Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding)

Selected images - CONTACT SHEETS

Most of these photos were taken in the Harlow town centre, where I walked around and took photos of things I found colourful. The Harlow town centre is not very colourful, it is quite a dull area, but there are a lot of flowers especially around the pond and outside a few cafes and restaurants. Some of these were taken in Spain, when I went on holiday and there was a lot of colour there so I took a few photos and chose my best ones. I believe my images show the formal element colour which I am pleased with. The aspects of colour in my images are mostly in flowers because I enjoyed taking photographs of flowers as you can see more detail the closer you get. Flowers are very general and common to have colour so my ideas went towards concentrating on photographing flowers. I feel I could have however generate a wider range of photos as it is quite repetitive.

My best images

I like this image as the red of buses are more vibrant than the other colours in this photo. Even though there is a lot happening in this image, but there is a limit of colour so the bright red is very distinctive compared with the grey. By using photo shop I will edit this so the red stands out even more, making the viewers eyes draw to the red buses straight away. This image shows how Harlow is urban, this is seen by the buses looking a bit old and by there not being many people about. This area is not very visitable as it is hidden away and not many people know about this area. The urban feel of this image gives the viewer a sense of what Harlow is like, Harlow has a lot of buildings and car parks - as it is quite populated and there is a shopping centre for people. This was inspired by Richard Cartwright as he took photos of places and what happens on an everyday bases, this is what happens on an everyday bases in Harlow - buses go and return with new passengers. People walk to and from college this way, this environment there are lots of shops and cafes so there are people walking to there or getting off the bus to go these cafes and to shop in these shops.

I found this image very easy to take as the ducks were just standing and doing nothing. I like this photo because the camera focused really well on the duck in the centre so you can see the many colours a duck has. I like how the background is quite blurry as well which makes the focus on the duck better. Also, there is a contrast between the green and yellow & the brown on the duck, this makes the primary colours seem more clear and bright compared to the brown feathers. The background also relates to the duck as it shows what conditions the duck lives in. This was inspired by my image bank, in my image bank there was an image of parrots, so I decided to take photographs of animals (ducks) to have the same concept. To edit this image I will make the background the duck quite muted and pastel so the concentration is more on the duck in the middle, I will also select the duck separately and make the duck more vivid and vibrant.



By there being a single red flower, there is no distraction of multiple flowers. Also, as the background is dark green, it makes the red more distinctive and detailed. The detailedness of flower is also clear as you can see every layer of petals, which makes the photograph even more beautiful. This image was taken in the town park where there is a lot of colour to take pictures of. It is surrounded by darkness so the red is the main colour. The colour red emotionally shows love and passion which what is presented when someone gives a loved one or a friend a flower. This image was inspired by Robert Cartwright - even though he does not have many photos of flowers and my photographer image bank does not show his flower photography, he has still inspired me when he took photos from the Columbia Road Flower Market (which is one of the photos in my photographer research) because he used muted colours which I really like and the colours were muted but still very noticeable and eye catching.



This image was taken in the Harlow town centre at a food stall, where the man kindly cut open a lemon for us to photograph. I like how all the other lemons are the same so they're all yellow and smooth, whereas the lemon in the centre is cut open and you can see the detail inside the lemon. This can be a metaphor about how everyone can be the same but you can be different. My idea of editing this image is to select the single lemon that has been cut in half and make it stand out more by changing the other lemons/background black and white. I would then make the lemon slightly bit more vivid. This would give the image more of an in-depth meaning and it will be more noticeable for viewers.



This photograph was taken in Spain when I was holiday. This was directly in front of my hotel room balcony, so I took the opportunity to take this image. I feel as if this presents a happy day as the colours are vibrant and compliment each other.  This is also inspired by Robert Cartwright and his Columbia Road Flower Market. The whiteness of the clouds makes the pink on the flowers more bright. The colours in this image represent happy things, such as: happiness, joy and peace. The colours can represent a 'holiday feel' as the colours are very bright and the sky is clear - the composition of this image is, in my opinion, very satisfactory as the pink and green in the bottom left corner compliments the blue and white in the sky.

Images that require improvement

This image was inspired by Robert Cartwright and his light photography (as seen in my photographer research), I didn't like how this turned out because the yellow light is not seen and the lights just look a mess. I wanted to get the 3D feel from the lights as all three were supposed to go from large to small. The composition is very unsatisfactory because the white and yellows lights have been cropped by the size of the camera lens. This image can be seriously improved when I have the ability to retake this image or create a similar one. If I were to reshoot this image again, I would make sure the lights are in the camera area so all lights can be seen and then I would think of a creative idea on what they should do with those lights. 

This image was taken in the Harlow library. This is a painting on a wall in the children's reading area. I was attempting to get an image of this painting and make it look like a 'realistic' painting by taking multiple photos, but I only did it at one angle and the light glare was not much help towards creating this image.  I don't like this image as there is a light glare which makes the photo look tacky and unprofessional, I don't think I would attempt to reshoot this image as the glare would keep ruining it. However, if I were too I would get a different angle of this image and get the composition right in order to get the perfect image.



This last image is of some flowers outside of the Esquires cafe, the problem with this image is that the camera focused on the flowers in the background rather than the flowers in the front. I could edit this and crop it so the focused flowers are the main flowers for this photograph - then I would just edit it how I usually would with my other photos. I believe I can improve this image a lot if I reshoot this - I would make sure the composition is correct, is the focus is on the right thing and my aperture is low (so it blurs out the background).

(A03: Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress)

My idea of recording colour, was too take pictures of everything with colour in it. Most of my photographs for colour is of flowers, but I feel I need to further my ideas and take pictures of a variety of objects, buildings and nature and use photoshop to make some colours more saturated or muted than others. I now understand what different colours mean, as I feel that I did not know that different colours mean specific things. This has made it easier for me to look at different photographs that represent colour and write about what I see and what it may mean. My photographs are all very average with the occasional admirable one, this allows me to access what formal elements I am more interested in and which ones takes my interest - I have decided to take more interest and time in what I am photographing as this will be my way of gathering a good set of images and my editing on photoshop (which I have really improved on) will go towards perfecting my photographs.

(A02: Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops)

These images were taken using a Fuji Fineopix S9600 and a Samsung NX20 20.3 MP SLR. The Samsung camera is a new camera so I am learning how to use it and how to change some settings. When I was using the Fuji Fineopix camera I was using the auto focus setting, which may have explained why a few of my images were out of focus so next time I will make sure I will always use the manual focus setting as it will be easier to take photographs. By using the same camera I am able to improve my handling of the camera and follow/understand the settings properly. To improve my images I imported a few into photoshop, to make some colours brighter and some darker. Below are screenshots of how I did this on one of my best images...

The final image was created by selecting the single cut lemon too make the rest of the lemons black and white. The next two screenshots are of how I made the background lemons have a different contrast of black and white and the main lemon stand out more. I am pleased with my final edit because the yellow is very bright, even though I lowered the saturation a little bit the colour still 'pops'. The yellow makes people emotional feel warm and cheerful. By changing these filters and changing some colours I have achieved a new affect on this image, it is now more eye catching. The lemon is now standing out as I wanted it too and the background is darkened to emphasise the single cut lemon.

(AO1: Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and 

other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding)

I felt that researching photographers and looking at their different work inspired me to take a few of these photos. By looking at the different photographers' work I was able to concentrate on what I was photographing and what colours I could see. Around Harlow there are mostly lots of greens because of all the fields and trees, etc. I feel as if I could be more creative and just take pictures of whatever I see and then further them by using my explanations and photoshop. Colour is an aspect that can be achieved very easily when doing photography, you can change the way a colour looks by editing it and by doing this you can change the meaning of the whole image. Colour has given me inspiration to have colour in almost all of images because colour can tell a story and gives the photo a different meaning from black and white - the colour expresses different emotions in the image which can show the viewer a more in depth narrative.

(AO4: Present a personal and meaningful response that realises intentions and, where appropriate, makes connections between visual and other elements)

I found it quite easy to take a few photos but I just needed to find the right object and to take it at the right angle to get the perfect photograph. I feel that I look at colour differently now because of all the different terms I've learnt about and what different colours mean. For example; Orange can be a behavioural view of fast food, because it is welcoming and noticeable as it is overly used. Below are some edits I made of my images based on colour...