Moving on to the next exercise. Here, the purpose is to build up a library of colours in order to be able to judge and understand colours, in other words to develop and refine ones colour sense. The starting point is a simple colour wheel as shown below:
The colour wheel used for this exercise is one known as the "painters' colour wheel". This is where the primary colours, opposite each other, are red, yellow and blue. They sit opposite their complementary colours, or secondaries, which are green, violet and orange.
The exercise calls for taking 3 photographs for each of the 3 primary and the 3 secondary colours. The photographs call for bracketed exposures of +/- 1/2 stop and then selecting the one which comes closest to the colour wheel reproduced in the notes.
I found this exercise particularly frustrating as colour very much depend on its environment, hues imparted by the light at the time and the way that my brain translates colour. What do I mean by that? Well, a bunch of bananas appears the same to me regardless of where it is, and under what light. The brain, in many circumstances adjusts the "white balance" automatically. However, when the ambient light generates a strong colour cast, then the compensation does not seem to happen. So, at night, under a strong sodium light, everything takes on a heavy colour (yellow) cast.
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Yellow ISO 3200 1/30 f/4 |
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Red ISO 3200 1/30 f/4 |
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Blue ISO 3200 1/30 f/4 |
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Violet ISO 3200 1/30 f/4 |
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Green ISO 3200 1/30 f/4 |
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Orange ISO 200 1/60 f/9 |
In part 2 of Primary and Secondary colours, I will be following the exercise more closely in order satisfy the brief.
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