Colour Relationships - Tones in B&W (3.3b)

Requirement

4 images

Purpose

To understand how colours affect tones in black and white images

Technical learning

• Black and white photography has revived in the digital era: post-production makes 2 important features easy - monochrome conversion and adjusting tones to suit intent
• Colour filters brighten their applicable colours and darken their opposites, e.g. a red filter enhances reds but darkens blues.

Exercise instructions

• Make a still life with 4 objects: 1 coloured red, 1 yellow, 1 green and 1 blue on a mid grey brackground 
• Take 1 photograph
• Convert image to monochrome in Photoshop
• Produce 4 further images by dialling up in the monochrome conversion tool (a) the red component, (2) blue, (3) green and (4) yellow. 
• Each case keep the tone of the grey bcakground unchanged

Images and review

A favourite old coffee mug almost fits on its own the subject requirement for this project. Large Orange (instead of Red), Green and Blue Polka dots on Yellow. The neutral grey came courtesy of a predominantly grey packing blanket lying forgotten in the garage.

Colour Original

Converted to black and white without colour filtering effect

Neutral Monochrome

After applying Blue filter effect..

Blue Polka Dot assumes a light tone
whilst all of the other (brighter) colours become
signficantly darker, most noticeably
the Yellow and Orange

After applying the Green filter effect...

Green Polka Dot becomes lighter, the Blue is unchanged,
whilst the Yellow and Orange have turned
a shade darker

After applying the Orange filter

Orange, Yellow  and Green Polka Dots lighten, the
Blue darkens

Finally, after applying the Yellow filter

Orange, Yellow  and Green Polka Dots lighten, the
Blue darkens. In fact the Orange and Yellow filters
have largely the same effect, at least to the eye, due
to the proximity in the inherent brightness
of these twi colours

Colour Relationships (3.3a)

Requirement
6/7 images

Purpose
To identify how to use colour relationships for physical and emotional impact

Technical learning
The key types of colour relationship are:

Complementary 

• What is it? Combining 2 colours opposite each other on the colour wheel. (e.g. G/R, B/O, Y/V). This also combines warm (advancing) and cool (receding) colours
• Impact?  High-contrast but also harmonious, especially if brightness is balanced (Scale: Y = 9, O= 8, R = 6, G = 6, B = 4, Violet = 3)

Monochromatic 

• What is it? Using different shades of the same colour
• Impact?  Clean and elegant. Soothing, easy on the eyes, especially in blue or green.

Analogous 

• What is it? Colours adjacent to each other on the colour wheel. Oten 1 colour is dominant while others enrich the scheme. 
• Impact? Similar to monochromatic, with greater nuances. Consider either staying within warm and cool range, or crossing over.

Split Complementary

• What is it? 1 colour contrasted with the 2 colours adjacent to its complementary (e.g. R/ B & Y, O/ V & G)
• Impact? High contrast, with less tension from using complementary colours

Triadic 

• What is it? Use of colours equally spaced around the colour wheel (e.g B/R, B/Y, Y/R, Y/G, Y/V)
• Impact? Contrast, yet harmonious, balanced and rich in colour

Exercise instructions
Part 1

• Shoot 1 image for each combination of primary and secondary colours
• Follow the ratios that balance their relative brightness 

Part 2 

• Prodcue 3 or 4 images with colour combinations (2 or more) that you like
• Be aware of balance/ imbalance and consider its effect

Images and review

1. Complementary pairs

Green/ Red

Sex Shop Window
Colour complements appear in all
walks of life!

Orange/ Blue

Building worker crosses Blackfriars Bridge, London
Orange fatigues contrast with the blue
of the sky

Yellow/ Violet

Flowers in a supermarket
Violet (reddish) petals, red centres
Combination is rarer than other 2 complementary pairs

2. Appealing pairs

1. Blue, Red and White

London Eye at twilight as seen from Waterloo Bridge
Strong circle of blue, red and white
(the union flag)

2. Warm and Cool colours in shapes

Fencing outside school in London
Mixes warm colours (red and yellow mainly) with 
cool ones (shades of blue, a dash of green), as well
as squares, circles and rectangles

3. Analogous - blues and violets at night

National Theatre at nightime
The camera sees colour more vividly at
night than the eye. Lighting at night projects
colour onto light brown concrete wall
that look so uninspiring during the day 

4. Analogous - red, orange and yellow

Canoes for hire, Lyme Regis
Red, orange and to a lesser extent yellow
Balance comes from more red than orange and 
more orange than yellow.
Blue sky background isolates boats: a cool colour
vs. warm ones

Colour - Building a Library of Colours (3.2)

Requirement

6 x3 = 18 photographs

Purpose

To identify primary and secondary colours and reproduce them in images

Technical learning

• 2 main systems of colour: 1. Painters (aka reflective, substractive) and 2. Light (aka transmitted, additive)
• Primary colours in the 'Painters' are: Red, Yellow, Blue. Primaries in 'Light': Red, Green and Blue.

• The colour wheel helps to understand the relationship between colours: firstly, how some colours are created from others; secondly, how individual colours work in combination with each other.

Colour Wheel (Primaries, Secondaries, Tertiaries)

• Primaries (Red, Yellow, Blue) combined produce Secondaries (Orange = red + yellow; Green = Blue + Yellow; Violet = Red + Blue). 
• Primaries and Secondaries combined produce Tertiaries

Exercise instructions

• Find scenes, or parts of them,  dominated by a single primary and secondary colours (red, yellow, blue – green, violet, orange).  
• With each colour that you find vary the exposure slightly (+/- half a stop) to improve the chance of an acceptable match with the colour in its pure state. 
• Limit the choices of man-made decorative surfaces (e.g. paint on doors).  
• Spend time examining materials in their natural colour (e.g. greens in vegetation, colours of flowers). 
• Seek out backlit colours to avoid surface reflections (e.g. yellow flowers) against a dark background. 
• Consider underexposing bright colours (organge, red, yellow) to make them more intense.  Note, however, that it takes time to find pure, simple colours: uncommon in real life.

Images and review

Warm Colours

Red

Coca Cola Cans

As shot - contains an orange cast

Minus 0.5 stop - more saturated and closer
to pure red

Plus 0.5 stop - increases orange
colour cast

Orange

Carrots 

As shot - 

Minus 0.5 stop - more intense

Plus 0.5 stop - washed out

Yellow

Grapefruit

As shot - yellow is darker than pure

Minus 0.5 stop - has slightly more intense

Plus 0.5 stop - dayglow grapefruit

Cool Colours

Blue

Rain on glass looking up to the sky

As shot - most faithful rendition

Minus 0.5 stop - becomes muddy

Plus 0.5 stop - too pale

Green

Golden Delicious Apples

As shot - correct

Minus 0.5 - too dark

Plus 0.5 - too light

Violet

Lucozade bottles

As shot - most accurate

Minus 0.5 - murky

Plus 0.5 - over bright

Control the strength of colour (3.1)

Requirement

5 photographs

Purpose

To show how colour brightness changes with exposure, whereby under-exposure darkens hue

Technical learning

• Monochrome images, with their currency of contrast and brightness, help focus attention on line, shapes, textures and tones
• However,  colour - as a design element - works differently and often produces a strong response, emotional as well as physical

3 qualities of colour

Hue

• Essential quality of how we name colour e.g. red, blue, etc. 
• Primary colours are 'irreducible', i.e. they cannot be created from mixing other colours. 
• 2 basic systems: reflective (or painters') and transmitted (light). 
• Painters' primaries are Red, Yellow and Blue. Light primaries are Red, Green and Blue. (the Red and Blue of each system are different)
• Secondary colours are created by mixing 2 primaries in equal amounts. 
• In the painter's system: Green = Blue and Yellow, Orange = Red and Yellow, Violet = Blue and Red. 

Saturation 

• Purity or intensity of a colour from grey. 
• At full saturation a colour contains no grey at all. 
• Conversely, at low saturation the colour would be mostly grey.

From desaturated to fully saturated

Brightness

• Degree to which black (shade) or white (tint) is mixed with the hue at a given saturation. 
• At one end of the scale is pure white, at the other pure black.  
• Judge brightness from ‘very dark’ (shade) through ‘average’ to ‘very bright’ (tint) 

Tints of yellow

Shades of yellow

Note - charts sourced from Designing for the Web by Mark Boulton 

http://designingfortheweb.co.uk/book/index.php

Saturation interacting with brightness 

• The chart below shows how for a red hue of the car body part extreme changes in saturation and brightness interact. 
• I created this chart from the photograph of  a red car, shot in RAW and adjusted the saturation and lightness in Photoshop. 

• Central image: The (impure) red car body part as shot by me
• Min Saturation: Min Brightness: Desaturation towards a grey tone, darkened by lowering brightness (adding black) to produce a near black. If the car body was pure red, the result would have been black
• Min Saturation: Max Brightness: Desaturation towards a grey tone,  lightened by increasing bightness (adding white) to produce pink. If the car body was pure red, the result would have been white.
• Max Saturation: Min Brightness: Full saturation of red content, darkened by lowering brightness (adding black) to produce a deep maroon
• Max Saturation: Max Brightness: Full saturation of red content, lightened by increasing brightness (adding white) to a day glow red

Control over saturation - exposure

• Several techniques give you control over colour at the time of shooting – one of the most basic is saturation

Project and review

Find a strong colour, e.g. a painted door. Fill the frame with the coloured subject. Take 5 bracketed exposures: average +/- 0.5 and 1.0 stops.  The underexposure reduces the brightness of the image and conversely overexposure increases it.

Leaf in close up

- 0.5 stop

- 1 stop

Average exposure

+ 1 stop

+ 0.5 stop