Colour

Colour

Definition: 

The property possessed by an object of producing different sensations on the eye as a result of the way it reflects or emits light. Colour can also present moods and reflects emotion.

Colour and Emotion

Coldplay - Yellow

The colours throughout the music video help present the mood of the lyrics/song. It begins with dark colours and a low brightness and as the music video progresses the colours become brighter and more vibrant.

 

Amy Winehouse - Tears dry on their own

In comparison to Coldplay we have Amy Winehouse's music video which had vibrant colours throughout to represent the bright and hopeful mood throughout the song.

Colours and what they represent:

Each colour can represent an emotional, physical and behavioural sensation.

Red - This colour is linked with the emotions of passion, love, strength and anger.
          Physically it can represent raised blood pressure, raised heart rate and can also stimulate                      appetite.
          Behaviourally it represents heat, aggression, danger, and stop.
Orange - This colour is linked with the emotions of happiness, energetic, pleasant, social.
               Physically it can represent  movement, energy, vigour and encouragement
               Behaviourally it represents movement and fastfood
Yellow - This colour is linked with the emotions of warmth, cheerful, solitary, irritable
               Physically it can represent poor skin, reflection, and brightness.
               Behaviourally it represents liveliness, security, caution and slow
Green - This colour is linked with the emotions of friendliness, calming, neutral and balanced
              Physically it can represent concentration, focus and attention
              Behaviourally it represents jealousy, envy, money and avarice
Blue -   This colour is linked with the emotions of isolation, peaceful, cool and distant
              Physically it can represent lowered blood pressure, and decreased appetite
              Behaviourally it represents calm, conservative, loyal and trusting.
Purple - This colour is linked with the emotions of spiritual, enlightened,creative and artistic
              Physically it can represent calming, relaxing and helps insomnia
              Behaviourally it represents surprise, magic, regal, royal and rare

Definitions: 

Analogous Colours - Analogous colours are groups of three colours that are next to each other on the colour wheel, sharing a common colour, with one being the dominant colour, which tends to be a primary or secondary colour, and a tertiary. Red, orange, and red-orange are examples.



Complimentary Colour - Opposite on the colour wheel, these colours are known as harmonious colours and always look good together.



Muted Colour - When any colour is mixed with black it is called shading which lowers the "value" and makes the colour a bit more "muted". If you add white to a colour it is called tinting which increases its value and makes it brighter. Not all colours can get dark or bright, most notably yellow

Primary - The colours red, yellow and blue which can be mixed to produce secondary colours.



Secondary - The colours purple, orange and green which are resultants of mixing primary colours.





Artist Research

Irving Penn

Irving Penn was an American photographer known for his fashion photography, portraits, and still life's. Penn's career included work at Vogue magazine, and independent advertising work for clients including Issey Miyake and Clinique. His work has been exhibited internationally and continues to inform the art of photography.

This photo produced by Irving is a portrait of a women who has pattern on her face. The freckles cover the majority of her face creating patterns and analogous colours compared to her skin tone and her hair.

Image Bank

The following images were added as part of my visual research

Contact Sheets

Best Images

I have selected the following as my best images

Images That Need Improvement

These following images don't include colour, as well as two of the images are not focused and are blurry. In the second image there is a fly sitting on one of the flowers which disturbs the image. The first two images are also poorly chosen objects to photography for this title of colour.

AO3: Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress

My first idea when photographing colour was to capture all the different colours in flowers and in nature. There was a variety of different plants to photography around the college. A challenge when photographing flowers is that they moved a lot in the weather conditions.
(photos dont link with irrving parr, chnage artist?)

AO2: Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops

Photoshop

Original Photo:

Black and White Image:

 
 
When editing this photo I started with a black and white layer and then edited each colour to enhance the darkness around my eye and in my eye to then highlight the brighter parts of my eyes. For example the reflection in my eye came under cyan, as you can see I have made this part whiter and therefore highlighting an enhancing this section of my eye. I have made the blue and red parts of the image as they came under the ring of my eye and my face. Having these parts darker helped set a more of a contrast in the image and highlight the brighter parts.

Muted Image:



When editing for a muted image I lowered the saturation and brightness to make the colours softer, also making the whole image slightly blue to add a cold look to the image. I wanted to insure you could still see the detail of colour in the eye, therefore I made the colours around the eye lighter to help the colours in the iris stand out mote but without making them vibrant, therefore keeping the image quite muted. I used curved to balance out the brightness in the image as some parts of my face and eye were brighter than each other, this helps keep the image soft looking and muted.

Saturated Image:



When editing for a saturated image I increased the saturation to make the colours much more vibrant. To stop the colour of the skin looking too red i lowered the lightness of the image. I insured that when doing this it didn't dull the vibrance of the colours,  the bright blue and orange Still stands out compared to other colours in the image but the skin is still softer and less over powering of them colours.

Experimental:




When editing this image there we several steps i had to take to get to this final product. Firstly i duplicated the layer and made the background unsaturated. The layer 1 over the top is the layer I put a colour selection on and then cut out the unwanted colours. This then left me with my black and white background with my coloured iris layer 1. I then changed the saturation to enhance the colours further.
When further editing my photos i removed certain blemishes to neaten the image by using the healing tool. Here are the before and after images of my healing tool editing:

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

AO1: Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.

The artists research helped me to create contrasting mages myself. For example the red and orange berries i put together to create analogous colours. As I was photographing I discovered that there was more colours around me than I thought and Irving Penn helped me to see this. I converted some images in black and white to compare to Irvin Penn's images, although i feel that most of my images are better when they are saturated.

































AO4: Present a personal and meaningful response that realises intentions and, where appropriate, makes connections between visual and other elements. 

The images I have produced I believe are a great representation of colour and have been refined to what I think are the best of my images.

Line

Line

Definitions

A line represents a "path" between two points.
A line can be straight, curved, vertical, horizontal, diagonal, or zigzag.
Lines imply motion and suggest direction or orientation.
A line can also be implied and is then filled in by the mind when several points are positioned geometrically within a frame.
The direction and orientation of a line can also imply certain feelings

• Horizontal lines imply tranquillity, peace and harmony

• Vertical lines imply power and strength.

• Diagonal lines imply movement, action and change.

• Curved lines or S shaped lines imply quiet, calm and sensual feelings.

• Lines that converge imply depth, scale and distance - a fence or roadway converges into the distance provides the illusion that a flat two-dimensional image has three-dimensional depth.

Research

Photographer: Walker Evans

Walker Evans was an American photographer and photojournalist best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression. His main goal photographing for the FSA is said to be that as a photographer he wanted to make pictures that are "literate, authoritative, transcendent". Not only did Walker Evans take photos but he also wrote. He was born November 3rd 1903 and died April 10th 1975.

The images above were captured in black and white film, therefore creating a melancholy mood. This mood links with the Great Depression which Evans had to photograph. Using the black and white film also emphasises on the road markings and street signs, therefore being the main focus of the image. The arrows in the road imply direction and movement, along with the diagonal lines with the road marking "ONLY" which can suggest there being only one direction to travel.  

Image Bank

The following images were added as part of my visual research:

This above collection of photographs represent some of the images that I felt I could capture within Harlow.

Contact Sheets

Best Images 

I selected the following as my best images:

I have selected these following images as I believe, out of the images I took, they had the most interesting or best structured lines within the image. The camera was well positioned and kept still in all these images presented, giving the images a great composition and lines effect.

Images that need improvement

I have selected these images as my worst images as all have the wrong aperture, they are all too bright. They are all focused (or not focused at all) in the one parts of the image. To improve my images I could take more time into focusing the camera and setting the correct aperture for each of the images, as well as using a stand to stop images from becoming blurring due to the camera moving. If I were to shoot again I would insure all my camera settings are at their optimum and take more time when shooting my images.

My 8th image in my contact sheet links with the artists photography because of the road markings which are black and white similarly to Walker Evans photos. 

AO3: Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress

My idea for recording line was to photograph the urban landscape exploring different lines present such as curves, horizontal,vertical lines and leading lines. I was inspired from my research of Walker Evans' street images with regards to the geometry and composition. His use of lines and signs gave me an idea to photograph road markings within Harlow. Although most of my photos do not show road markings or signs in Harlow, my use of perspective and creativeness has successful captured lines in different parts of Harlow. One thing I'd improve with my shoot is that I need to follow my original ideas along with new ones, I need more images of road markings and signs in Harlow. 

My first best image of the pond in the food court has strong diagonal lines just like Evan Walkers. I can Photoshop it black and white and make the reflection of the water brighter, this will link with Evan Walkers photography further as it shows the contrast of black and white lines.

The image with the long grass was hard to capture as the grass kept moving with the mind. Although this photo doesn't link to Evan Walkers photography, the lines involved are creative and abstract.

For the other images, I found it hard to get straight images. The majority of my images are off centred and I believe with time and practise I can over come this and improve the composition of my images.

AO2: Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops

Camera Settings

Image you talk about

If I re-shoot this again I would capture more images that link to the artist Evan Walker. I would also use a tripod to straighten my images and to also keep focus.

Photo Shop

 To further develop my images I plan to edit the images by lowering the exposure and removing the saturation to give it a black and white effect and to also make the white parts of the images stand out and highlight compared to the darker parts of the images.

In this image I used curves to make the road a lot darker compared to the white lines, this really highlighted the zebra crossing and lines in this image. I then made the image black and white and further made the road darker and the white lines lighter. I have done this to link with Evan Walkers black and white images, and to also clearly show where the lines are in the image.

AO1: Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.

The artist research was helpful as there are many road markings in Harlow to photograph. The research that helped the most was the various abstract images i found of line, these images helped me understand that perspective plays are big part of line photography. To extend my skills on this I tried my best to vary my perspectives when taking my photos.

AO4: Present a personal and meaningful response that realises intentions and, where appropriate, makes connections between visual and other elements.

I believe I have produced a successful line of images, these final images have been refined and altered to create the best photos I could do to my ability.