Colour Assignment 3 - Introduction

The objective of this assignment is to be able to find and use colours in deliberate relationships in photography.

The task is to take photographs which illustrate the following colour relationships:

• colour harmony through complementary colours
• colour harmony through similar colours
• colour contrast through contrasting colours
• colour accent in any combination

Four photographs are required for each category.

Furthermore, the photographs selected should represent a variety of subject matter, unlike the previous assignment where the portfolio consisted of particular subject area.

To achieve this variety, I have brought together the photographs that I took whilst performing the exercises on colour in Guildford and surrounding areas, some photographs I have taken subsequently whilst on holiday in Normandy in France and a selection of my library photographs.

I have referred to the course notes, the OCA supplement on Basic Colour Theory, and The Photographer's Eye repeatedly during this section of the course. Nevertheless, I have found it relatively difficult to classify colour relationships and to evaluate these in practice. I think that there are several reasons for this:-

• I am slightly confused about what is "harmonious" about a complimentary colour combination. If saturated, there is a strong contrast between such different tones. For complimentary colours, I have the developed the idea that whilst such colours are totally contrasting in tone, when they are side by side, the one colour enlivens and enhances the other. If two contrasting colours are side by side on the other hand, the visual effect is jarring rather than enlivening. I am not sure whether I have understood this properly.
• My perception of some colour relationships does not directly match the theory. I feel that blue and yellow is quite a striking and pleasing combination for example, whereas saturated red and green often seem to be rather unattractive side by side. To me, magenta and green is more harmonious.
• The different ways of expressing the colour wheel mean that different pairs of colours can be opposites depending on the colour wheel. For example, blue is opposite orange in the "painters" version of the colour wheel based on red, yellow and blue as primary colours. Blue is however the opposite of yellow, in the "printers" version of the colour wheel where cyan, magenta and yellow are the prime colours. I am not sure whether this accounts for differing colour perceptions noted above.