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