Exercise: Primary and secondary colours - Part 2

I spent quite some time collecting possible sets to demonstrate colours and have ended up mostly with the results which I shot in a local market.  I had wanted to avoid a collection of painted objects, preferring to use natural colours, though I just could not resist the stack of plastic crates used by fishermen to hold fish.  So to recap the brief, three images are required of each Primary and Secondary colour with the exposure varied by half a stop around the measured exposure.  These are then compared to the colours in the colour circle.

The primary colours

Red

Red is an exceptionally strong primary colour and has been described as emotionally intense.  This is not surprising as it is also classified as one of the psychlogical primary hues.  It is stimulating and frequently associated with danger.  It is a hot, sexy colour.

Here, the central image which is the measured exposure, is the image which I believe is the closest match to the colour wheel.

Yellow

Yellow is a "cheerful" colour and, as for red, it has warmth.  It is one of the psychological primary hues and can promote good feelings and is used to represent the sun.  I have chosen these melons to illustrate this colour and have found that the image which is overexposed by half stop is the nearest to the colour wheel match.

Yellow is visible at considerable distances which is why, for many years, yellow was chose as the recognition colour for training aircraft in many armed forces, including the RAF.

Blue

This is another of the psychological primaries and promotes calm and a sense of peace.  It is a cool colour, but nevertheless it is said that in surveys it is usually listed as the most popular colour.

Of these, the darker blue of the crates in underexposed image on the left comes closest to that in the colour wheel.

The complementary or secondary colours

Green

Another of the psychological primaries, green is a "safe" colour.  It is used as the signal to "go" in traffic lights and many other applications.  Green is also a relaxing colour.  Many organisations and religions have green as their colour, Islam for example.  A well known organisation is Greenpeace, hence green is associated as being the colour for being environmentaly friendly.

There is a huge number of green in the natural world and I have chosen these bushes as likely to be closest match to the wheel.  I do not have a pure single colour in the image; it is a collection of different greens.  On the whole, the underexposed image on the left is closest to the colour in the wheel.

Violet

Violet is a difficult colour to reproduce.  It is a dark colour and again is part of the "cool" group of colours.

Of the three, I see the underexposed image on the right as being closest to the colour wheel.

Orange

Another of the "happy" colours, orange exudes warmth.  It seems to be one of the easiest colours to find.

Here the overexposed image on the left is the one which is closest to the colour wheel.

What have been the learning points from this exercise?  The sheer variety of colour is certainly one of those things which has surprised me, particularly with the difficulty I had in matching the main primary and secondary colours.  Another key point was the control over the depth of colour through exposure.I found that the warmer colours benefited from some overexposure in order to bring out their true colour.  I found that some colours, when underexposed, became muddy, with yellow having a particular tendency for this.

Exercise: Primary and secondary colours - Part 1

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.

Yellow
ISO 3200 1/30 f/4

Other sources of coloured light are those used on stage, for example by a band as illustrated in the following images which provide the remaining Primary and secondary colours (excepting Orange):

Red
ISO 3200 1/30 f/4

Blue
ISO 3200 1/30 f/4

Violet
ISO 3200 1/30 f/4

Green
ISO 3200 1/30 f/4

Sadly, orange was not a colour in the band's pallette, so I had to look elsewhere, and finally, I found a tram which supplied the required orange:

Orange
ISO 200 1/60 f/9

This was my first part of the exercise done, though not the required one, I wanted to explore, mostly, colour through light, rather than reflected colour.  I wanted to do it this way as I thought I would arrive at colours which were 'cleaner' as they were not affected by colour influences from the sky and other reflective surfaces.  In the end, this did not quite succeed as the colours and the surfaces they were hitting did not provide the clean colours required.

In part 2 of Primary and Secondary colours, I will be following the exercise more closely in order satisfy the brief.