Colour Relationships - Part 2

In Part 2 of the "Colour Relationships" exercise, we are asked to produce three or four colour combinations which appeal to us.  In my case I have selected the 4 images below.  Although I was looking for suitable colour combinations, I was also struck by how many images in my photo collection repeat the combinations below.  In particular the Red : Blue and Green : Yellow are recurring themes.  Does that say something about me?

Orange : Red : Green
ISO 200  1/60 sec, f/22

The image above is pretty much in the 'warm' part of the colour wheel.  The background is orange and the pale red / pink of the flowers works well against the warmth of the wall.  The colours achieve harmony because they are adjacent.

Green : Yellow
ISO 200 1/200 sec, f/5.6

Yellow and green are adjacent in the colour wheel, so they work well together.  The paintwork of this taxi in Bangkok is certainly eye-catching.  Green is in the 'cool' side of the colour wheel whereas yellow is in the 'warm' side, though to me, the image is neither 'warm' or 'cold'.

Blue : Green : Red
ISO 200  1/125 sec, f/11

Red and blue are the dominant colours in this image of a Gnat vintage jet trainer.  Red and blue are a third of the way across the colour wheel so would be considered contrasting colours and therefore not considered harmonious.  To me, however, there is synergy between the two colours and they work well together.  Perhaps it is the tension between the colours which gives it dynamic appeal.

Yellow : Orange
ISO 100  1/250 sec, f/5

Yellow and orange exude warmth, and indeed they are adjacent colours on the 'warm' side of the colour wheel.  It is strange how rust, in all its colours can give this impression of warmth, despite being an indicator of decay.

Colours into tones in black and white

When photographing in black and white, or now, more likely, converting the digital image from colour to black and white, either filters or a form of filtration is used.  The standard had been set by Kodak with their range of Wratten gelatine filters.

Details of their usage are given in the Kodak Professional Data Guide as shown above.  They were listed in the form of a "Colour filter circle", which also gave the exposure factors to be applied for each.  Most helpfully the advice given is that "Adjacents Lighten" and "Opposites Darken", so for example, when using a green filter, which is listed as a Wratten #58, the grey tone rendering of yellow, green and blue-green will be lightened and the opposite colours of red, magenta and violet will be be darkened in tone.

So why are filters used in black and white photography?  There are three main reasons:

• to eliminate haze (yellow filter) or enhance atmospheric conditions (blue filter);
• to render tones in a black and white photographs in such a way as to make them look more natural; and
• emphasise objects due to their colour, classically, a yellow filter will darken the sky.

Filters are also used to correct colour casts or marks when photographing old documents, for example.

In digital photography, conversion to black and white can be achieved in a number of different ways, with considerable subtlety depending on the route chosen.  Most software will have a "button" which represents the one stop solution, in my case, using Lightroom v4, in the Develop module, I can click on the Black & White tab in the Basic adjustment panel or I can select B&W in the HSL / Color / B&W panel.  The effect on both is the same.  This is the starting point from which further adjustments can be made using the sliders which adjust the following colours:

Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Aqua, Blue, Purple and Magenta.

The nomenclature is that used by Adobe.

So to apply a yellow filter, say a Wratten #8, then would lighten yellow, by say taking the slider to say +40, but would also lighten Orange and Green, though to a lesser extent.  It is necessary, though, to remember to deal with the "opposites", so darken Blue, to say -40 and then darken Aqua, Purple and Magenta in smaller proportions.  Magenta would likely be darkened the least.

Most software will have a preset which will do this adjustment in a single step.  Lightroom v4 has the following B&W filter presets:

• Blue;
• Blue Hi-Contrast;
• Green;
• Infrared;
• Orange;
• Red;
• Red Hi-Contrast Filter; and
• Yellow.

The effect of applying these filter presets is different to the more simplistic rule applied using the Wratten Colour Filter Circle, so in my example above, Red is lightened most as as well are both Magenta and, to a smaller extent Purple.  Aqua is the "blue" colour darkened most.  I suspect that other software will also apply similar presets differently.

This exercise requires us to demonstrate the effect of applying No filter, Yellow (Wratten #11), Red (Wratten #25), Blue (Wratten #47) and Green (Wratten #58)

Original
ISO 100, 1/125, f/11

I have set up a scene which is likely to exagarate the impact of applying the 4 "filters".

No filter

Yellow - Manual

Here I moved the Yellow slider to +40 and the Blue slider to -40.  Orange and Green to +22 and Aqua and Purple to -22.  The blue background is noticeably darkened and yellow is very light in tone.  Green is slightly lightened.

Yellow - Preset

In the Lightroom v4 preset, both the Orange and Red are lightened significantly with Red having a value of +63.  Aqua has the lowest value at -38 and Blue at -17.

No Filter

Red - Manual

As before, I moved the Red slider to +40 and the Aqua slider to -40.  Orange and Magenta being lightened at +22 and Green and Blue being set to -22.  The effect is quite visible with the red being lightened and blue slightly darker.

Red - Preset

Again the preset is significantly different to my manual interpretation.  Red (+50), Orange (+38) and Yellow (+36) are significantly lightened.  Surprisingly Aqua is also lightened (+25).  The sum of all of these means that my manual interpretation is significantly different when judged against the preset.

No filter

Blue - Manual

This time I lightened Blue to max (+100), Aqua and Purple to +40.  Yellow (-40) and Orange (-20) were darkened.  This left yellow, green and red very similar in tone.

Blue - Preset

A massive difference after applying the preset with yellow and red becoming almost the same in tone with values of -60.  Blue (+63) and Aqua (+38) are lightened, thouhgh not to the same extent as I did in the manual and this is clearly evident.

No Filter

Green - Manual

For the green filter, I went back to my "standard" approach lightening Green to +40, Yellow and Aqua both to +20.  Red (-20), Magenta (-40) and purple (-20) were all reduced.  The effect is predictable and the difference is visible.

Green - Preset

Visually, the preset presents the red somewhat lighter, with a positive lightening of + 25.  Yellow and Aqua are much lighter at +40 and +38, so all these differences become visible.

What have I learnt from this exercise?  In the digital world I have a huge amount of control over how I want to adjust a black and white image.  The preset filters are a great starting point, but can then make further adjustments from there in order to achieve the desired effect. At least I do not have to consider the panchromatic qualities of the B&W film as well!

Colour relationships Part 1

Referring once again to the colour wheel, we look at the way colours interact, particularly those opposite each other in the colour wheel.  These opposites are known as complementary pairs and will have the maximum colour contrast.

It becomes noticeable, when complementary colours are combined, that the brighter colour is much more dominant, particularly when they are in equal blocks of colour.  It is in response to this psychological effect to colour, that,  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe postulated the proportions which such complementary colours should take in order to appear equal, in other words so that no one colour being dominant.

He assigned the following values to the six colours: yellow 9, orange 8, red 6, green 6, blue 4 and violet 3.  This gives rise to the following ratios:

• red : green            1:1
• orange : blue         1:2
• yellow : violet        1:3

In order to achieve a sense of harmony, images which have a limited palette, and which are constrained to the complementary colour, should utilise the above ratios.

The images below have attempted to demonstrate this:

Red : Green
1/350 sec,  f/6.7

This red / green combination works well.  I do seem to be using fruit and vegetables a lot in this.  

Orange : Blue
1/90 sec,  f/6.7

Orange and blue was much more difficult to find, but the pepper in the market came to the rescue.  Again I think that this illustrates Goethe's ratios.

Yellow : violet
1/15 sec,  f/9.5

I replaced my original image with this one of a crocus head.  Even though I used a macro lens for this, I still had to do a substantial crop in order to properly illustrate the ratio.

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.

Exercise: Control the strength of colour

Objective:  to demonstrate how colour changes with exposure.

In this set of images, it is brightness which is being considered.

Brightness is the relative lightness or darkness of a particular color, from black (no brightness) to white (full brightness).  If the sequence of images were therefore to be extended in both direction, from over-exposure to under-exposure, then as expected, they would go from white through to black.

This is achieved by controlling the exposure at the time of shooting.  In the sequence below, the exposure was varied by half a stop.  The first exposure in the sequence being the setting given by the camera's lightmeter and the second receiving half a stop additional exposure; all the remaining exposures being progressively half a stop under exposed from the "norm".

1/125 sec at f/11
R80 G0 B14.1

Looking at the sequence the one thing which becomes apparent is that the quality of the colour changes.  In this case, red goes to pink when it is lighter so no longer is this the true colour. Using the percentage RGB shown in Lightroom, this can be seen as the values change significantly as the exposure varies.  These values are shown in each caption.  As exposure decreases  the Red value decreases significantly, so the Blue component becomes more significant.  Given time I will look at other colours in the same way to see how these colour shifts affect those colours with changes in exposure.  Reading the various reference texts, I have noted that yellow only varies between a medium and very light.  

1/125 sec at f/9.5
R89 G14.6 B19.5

1/125 sec at f/13
R70 G0 B9.1

1/125 sec at f/16
R57 G0 B9.9

1/125 sec at f/19
R44 G0 B10.9

Study Visit to the Gillian Wearing exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery

This was my first participation in a study visit, in this case to the exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery.  Gareth Dent and Clive White escorted quite a large group of students at the exhibition and guided us through an informal discussion on the work of the artist.

I have included a link to the photograph, Self Portrait at 17 Years old which features on the website and which is representative of the "family" series of self portraits.

But, to the beginning.  We were provided beforehand with information about the visit and some objectives.  The visit was to help students with:

• gaining a personal perspective on the work of Gillian Wearing;
• reflect on the experience of seeing photography and video in a gallery;
• network with other OCA students.

I'll work backwards through the objectives.

Networking - this certainly was achieved.  It was a great pleasure to meet Richard Down whom I recognised from blogs and from the OCA facebook site, in fact he recognised me first.  Social networking is certainly powerful!  Everybody I found to be really welcoming and friendly and we certainly had some pretty animated discussion over coffee! Many were working their way through TAOP or P&P, with Richard doing the Digital Film Production module

The experience of seeing photography and video in a gallery - I guess I am a relatively frequent visitor to galleries to view photographs, having first gone some 30 years ago to the Photographer's Gallery when it was in Great Newport Street!  The point here, however, was well made by Gareth in the context of this exhibition.  Would one have viewed the videos at home and would they have had the same impact as they clearly did at the Gallery.  I have to admit that I doubt if I would have viewed them at home.  Certainly the presentation of the videos in the gallery was done with great impact and it was clear that Gillian Wearing had  a considerable say in how the work was to be presented and viewed.  When you first walk in into the gallery, there are 4 constructions which house the video viewing areas.  Facing outwards the viewing areas are unfinished, bare wood, as though these were "backstage".  An interesting device which sets the tone for the exhibition.

The work of Gillian Wearing - Gillian Wearing's primary interest is in people and how they interact with the world by what is going on inside their mind. through the use of masks, and in the case of the self portrait as her brother, she gets under their skin.  Aside from the videos, which are a major part of her work, the still portraits and the "Signs that say what you want them to say, and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say", series from 1992, to me, are the most interesting.

Taking the "Signs....." series, it was great to be able to see such a large number together, some 70 images out of the 600 which she had shot.  This was the first time that I had seen these together in such a large number and certainly they create a great impression of how people think.  There is a whole mix of emotions there: sadness, despair and humour.  The choice of location, including the Peckham shopping centre site of her "dance" adds to the images.  There is a curious juxtaposition of people against backdrop - Pink Elephant Parking on Pink Elephant Road.......  sometimes taking away from the feelings of the subject. Its interesting how times have changed on the surface, but beneath, the same issues remain.  This is very much the front stage / back stage of an individual.  This is brought up to date on the Whitechapel Gallery's Facebook site with a "Tell Gillian 2012-03-02 23:20:23", where many have submitted images of themselves in a similar vein - GW then choosing her favourites on the Guardian web site.

The self portraits fall into 2 distinct series, those of GW self portraits, "under the skin" of those who influenced her and the "family album"

The "influencers" were Arbus (2008), Mapplethorpe (2009), Warhol in drag (2010), Cahun (2012) and Sander (2012).  To me particularly striking was her take on the Mapplethorpe self-portrait as shown in the orginal form below (Credit to the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation web-site):

Robert Mapplethorpe Self Portrait 1988

The "family album" series was fascinating, but I felt somewhat disturbing.  I found it difficult to accept the concept of taking on the persona of other members of the family.  A particular example of this was the self portrait as her mother, shown below:

This image in the particular mask, as seen in the gallery, seems particularly expressionless and reminds me of  a porcelain doll.  Visions of a horror movie came to mind.  Nevertheless, I could appreciate the performance which was being enacted through the images rather than a post-production image manipulation in Photoshop.  The artist's own touch is also displayed here as the family portraits are all of a different size, with different colour frames and hung at different levels on the wall as though in a family home.  The intention, by the artist was to portray all at roughly the same age which adds to the viewer's confusion.  Only the grandparents were at their "correct" age.

Regarding the movies / video recordings, there is, the performance / dance in Peckham shopping centre.  There was no sound the dance music coming from within her head.  To me there seemed to be very little reaction / interaction with passers-by, perhaps by virtue of the camera on the tripod and, presumably others who were doing the filming.  Could this be that the passers-by wished to be disassociated with this performance?

The most significant video, in my mind, was left for us to see at the end.  This was the film "10-16" where adults lip sync to the words spoken by children within that age range.  The selection of the adults was very particular and intended match the sometimes happy, sometimes confused voices and feelings of the children.  I loved the 10-year old and the vision of playing in a tree house was very strong, as was also at the other end the matched actor to the anxieties of the16-year old, who was disturbed through having been fat and was struggling to find his sexuality.  In this last one, there is a connection to GW, as she appears, initially in the frame perfectly still with her back to the viewer as though to signify that this was indeed an interview.  As she is so still, could that have been a mannequin made to look like her?

In between there was the series of videos "confessions" where members of the public had responded to an advertisement and "confess" from behind the anonymity of a mask.  The confessions were disturbing in themselves, not least also due to the grotesqueness of the masks.

In summary, an enjoyable visit which certainly met its objectives and very thought-provoking.  Would I recommend this exhibition - absolutely.  I found it difficult to describe my emotions on here, so you must go to see it and experience it yourself.