Colour Photography

Colour Photography

Color photography uses media capable of reproducing colors. Black and white photography records only a single channel of brightness and uses media capable only of showing shades of gray. Colour Photographs create lots of different emotions whereas Black and White sets a depressing mood on some photographs because of the shadows in the picture. In Colour Photography, the right colors in a photograph can determine whether the photo is attractive to a buyer or a turn off to a viewer because it doesn't stand out. 

Colours determine the emotion and set the mood in the photo. Red, Orange and Yellow are most commonly warm colours. Blue, Purple and green on the other hand are more cold colours.

Different colors are associated with different emotions and moods. 

Red is usually known for creating warmth & passion in your photo. That is why Valentines day is accosted with red.  Red with a background in white adds  contrast but has an element of grace to it.

Orange is a mixture of yellow and red. It therefore, is associated with enthusiasm and warmth. Sunset photos are taken with an essence of warmth in them. 

Yellow reflects most of the light and draws a lot of attention. Too bright of an exposure can leave the photo looking unbearable. It is best to shoot yellow in down-tones.

Green is the color that sets the emotion in the photo. Quite often it is known to make you feel better. It’s nature’s color and often gets used in professional photography for Landscape. They have opposite impacts on your mood. 

Blue produces a sense of calmness. It can often help you to feel relaxed and chilled.

The Photo below shows an asymmetrical view. Many people are drawn to symmetrical photos because they are evenly balanced and are naturally attractive at first sight. A photo like this however, can be attractive to a viewer due to it being asymmetrical and some parts of the photo drawing more attention than others.

William Eggleston

Eggleston was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1939, and he grew up on the very edge of the Mississippi Delta, where he continues to work to this day. He bought his first camera, a Canon Rangefinder, in 1957, and after a short time of work in Black and White he switched to colour in 1965. 

Eggleston is known as one of the greatest photographers in history and this is due to his use of color. As you can see from this photo he tends to use color to highlight everything in the photo (mainly the subject) and bring the bright luminous colors through. I would argue that this is why William Eggleston is well known. 

Blue

The task we were given was to choose a colour and explore around college taking creative pictures of objects or people in blue. 

When i was on the shoot, i noticed that there was a lot more things to photograph than i first thought. I began to see ideas by just walking past ordinary objects and making them look attractive to look at. 

I think a strength in this exercise was that i could take ordinary objects, edit them and make them look attractive to viewers.

I think a couple of my images like Door signs could be more creative. I could of tried to find something that would look more effective on a photo instead of shooting basic things.

I think the task we did developed my photography skills because being told to shoot colours, makes you use your imagination and be creative with what you shoot. I noticed that my photos are a lot better than last time i did a task like this so its great to know I'm improving in my work.

Sharpening

How to Professionally Sharpen an image using Photoshop

First of all drag your image onto Photoshop so that it is ready to be sharpened. Then Double Click 'Duplicate Image'. Next double click on the layer and change the name to sharpening.

Portrait Photographers Research

Alec Soth

Alec Soth was born in 1969 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. He is an American photographer notable for large scale projects. Alec takes a variety of portraits which are always shot outside and never in the studio which shows Alecs character through his photos. It shows that Alec is an outdoor person and likes to create things outdoors really than inside. A few of Alecs photos are taken with strangers of his daily life. A lot of his photos are taken with the model being further away from the camera compared to other peoples work. It is usually a full body shot which Alec prefers taking. However occasionally a face portrait will crop up in his albums.

I would argue that Alec likes taking a lot of photos with a short depth of field. This shows that he prefers the model in the photo to be the centre of attention and everything else is blurred around them. By having the person in the centre of attention, it highlights them and makes you look at them before anything else around them.

Anders Petersen 

Petersen is known for his  and personal documentary-style black-and-white photos. He studied photography under Christer Stromholm in Sweden, 1966-1967. He frequently shot photos of the late-night regulars (prostitutes, drunks, lovers and drug addicts) in a Cafe in Hamburg, Germany. 
As you can see from the photos below, he always tends to shoot photos of people out in the early hours of the morning. Some of his photos could be seen as 'Destrubing', however others could look at it in a positive way and say that it was people living their daily lives.


The photo below is shot of two lovers that look to be drunk. The photo is shot at an angle with the woman closer to the camera. The couple are photographed in the centre of the shot to highlight them as the centre of attention.

Roger Ballan

Roger Ballen was born in New York City, New York, USA in 1950. He has lived in Johannesburg since the 1970s. In his early career he began by documenting the small villages of rural South Africa, Ballen starting photographing the people in these places in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Roger Ballan is known for doing Black and White photos with a grim effect to them. Some may say explicit, or some may say reality to life. I like his photos because it quite often it shows the harsh truth of daily life.

Larry Clark

Larry Clark was born on January 19, 1943 and is an American photographer, writer and film producer who is best known for the movie Kids and his photography book Tulsa. He usually photographs youth who casually engage in illegal drug use, underage sex, and violence. These photos below are quite disturbing at the fact that people are trying to take their lives. There is something about it that makes you want to look away, however at the same time look bait more. The fact that they want to kill themselves is bad enough, but taking pictures of people using violence and underage sex is disturbing. 

Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus was an American photographer and writer for photographs of dwarfs, giants, transgender people, nudists, circus performers. I would argue that Diane's photos are abnormal because she likes taking photos of people that stand out e.g. Giants. She highlights these people and makes a good picture out of it. Her photos are mainly life like, however as you can see below a child standing with a grenade is not ordinary life. She's added the grenade to the photo to bring emotion into the photo.


This photo is quite dramatic because it really shows the height of the giant. She uses the rule of thirds to great effect here as it shows the giant looking down at the old people.

As you can see, all of her photos are taken in black and white. This is because at the time she was around (March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971) no color cameras where invented at that time. The composition of her photos is mostly good as she shoots the models in the centre of the photo.

Exhibition Review

Exhibition Review

The Exhibition was on Wednesday 10th December and it was held at UCLan University in central lancashire. It was held by a group of Preston's College Photography Students that are eager to impress their newly developed skills in the photography world. The Exhibition was called 'Perspectives', this is because every photographer in the group had a different image, a different idea in mind when taking photos. There was roughly 25 students who participated in the show. In the show, the photos were hung in a room about head height and there was no visually similar images placed next to each other. The images weren't placed in groups because the whole idea of the name 'Perspectives' was that every photo was different.
      People would agree that the artwork was brilliant, but only a few were outstanding. I would argue that the best painting was the one below. This is because the emotion that has gone into the thought of the picture. A lot of the photos were done with colour, however its good that the fact that this one is black and white because it makes the facial details stand out with more emotion in the photo.
     The Theme in the exhibition was Perspectives which gives the idea that everybody's photo was meant to be different in their own creative, distinctive way. Compared to other exhibitions I've seen, i would argue that the is one of the best. This is due to the fact of the theme and the work and effort that has clearly gone into the show. The artist that created this photo drew my attention straight away to this photo. This was because it showed more emotion that the other photos. A lot of the photos had no expression to the models face. A few of the pictures the model was dressed up in different clothes, but with less emotion than this photo.
Aswell as my favorite one, there was a couple of other photos that stood out to me from the start and caught my eye. You could argue that the most unique photos were the ones with the coloured backgrounds. This is because they are the first pictures that catch your eye when you walk in the room. A couple had Orange backgrounds which looks effective and gave it a summer effect. The model in front of the orange photo was wearing sunglasses and shorts which made gave the picture a hot summer look. Another effect which looked professionally unique was a a sky blue background tone. The model in the blue background was wearing a coat which gave it a cold, wintery look. By having completely different photos it explains the exhibition name 'perspectives'.

    

Exhibition

Exhibition

This was my final image that I took for the exhibition. This was the image before it had been photoshopped. As you can see, the position of the face in the portrait is perfect as it is central. However the lighting on her facial details is overexposed so that needed correcting before it becoming the final edit. You may not be able to see from this photo, but the model had freckles. So by editing it in photoshop by using the spot removal tool, it got rid of 90% of her freckles.

This was my final image that I used for the exhibition. I found that a black and white effect looked better on the photo and I thought that it looked like she was showing more emotion than the original photo. The photo before edit was overexposed so I changed it a little to make it look even better.