Colour

Colour

Definition and theory

Saturated colour

Color saturation is the intensity of colour in an image. The term hue refers to the color of the image itself, while saturation describes the intensity (purity) of that hue. 

Muted colour
A colour with a lack of saturation

Analogous colours
Adjacent colours on a colour wheel. Analogous colours that are next to each other on the colour wheel supposedly go well together and are referred to as being harmonious. 

Complementary colours
Opposite colours on a colour wheel. When combined, the colours cancel each other out and produce a grey-scale colour such as black or white. 

Colour and meaning

RED: Physical.
Red is a powerful colour and is used to represent courage, strength, but red is negatively shown as being aggressive.

BLUE: Intellectual.
Blue is a soothing colour and can imply intelligence and calmness. It can also show coldness and loneliness.

YELLOW: Emotional.
Yellow is a stimulating colour and suggests confidence, self-esteem and friendliness, but too much of it suggests fear and depression.

GREEN: Balance.
Green is shown as a restful colour and implies peace, harmony and reassurance. Opposing to peace, green is well know to represent jealousy and also boredom.

VIOLET: Spiritual.

 David LaChapelle
This image uses a lot of colours which are saturated. The colour that grabs the viewers eye the most is yellow. This is because there are various things things in the picture and the majority of them are yellow. This use of colour implies friendliness and happiness, meaning the picture is supposedly a positive scene. The other colours used such as white suggests innocence which adds to the positivity of the picture.

Navad Kander

The main colours used here are muted colours, blue/grey, making the image seem dull. These colours instantly lean towards negativity when you look at the picture. Blue can be interpreted as lonely, which relates to the person's facial expression where she is looking rather gloomy/sad. However, blue can also be interpreted as calming, and her facial expression could be recognised as being completely still yet calm. 
The grey tone in the picture suggests depression and lack of confidence. This links to the impact of the blue colours coming through, making the overall view seem negative rather than the idea of calmness. 
There are small bursts of other colours such as pink and green which could suggest an uplift for the person. 

Image bank

I found the following images on the internet as apart of my visual research

I selected the several images above from the interent by searching colour photography and other similar searches. These images helped me to understand what kind of things, regarding colour, to look out for when taking my own images. I hoped to take a similar approach to the examples above when capturing my images. With these pictures in mind, I took my camera locally to take pictures of things that had colour. 

Research

William Eggleston
Eggleston was born in Tennessee in 1939 and raised in Mississippi. He had artistic hobbies growing up such as playing piano and drawing. He came across visual media at an early age and found a passion for it. Eggleston was sent to a boarding school when he was 15. He never felt as though he didn't fit in there, despite the fact that his peers were usually into hunting and sports whereas Eggleston was into music and painting. Years ahead, he went to Vanderbilt University in Tennessee for one year and, Delta State college in Mississippi for one semester. He next attended the University of Mississippi for around five years. However, he never achieved a college degree from his time in Universities. But, it was within these years that  his interest in photography progressed. He was given a camera from a friend at one of his previous universities and he proceeded to discover abstract expressionism. 

Eggleston took inspiration in his photography work from another photographer, Robert Frank and French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson's book, The Decisive Moment. Eggleston quoted that he didn't understand this book at first, but soon figured it out and realised it was "great". Eggleston started to experiment photography in colour, as apposed to black and white, in 1965. In 1973 and 1974, he taught at Harvard University and his own work was exhibited in 1976. Since, he has published books and portfolios.

Below are some examples of his work in colour:

This image is of a petrol station in the 70's/80's. The scene has many colours, but mostly primary colours. The main gas pump is bright red, the other is yellow and the car behind is blue. The sign is green with red and yellow. The shop itself is an off white colour. All these colours put together show simplicity.

This image shows several condiments on a table which is placed next to a window. This image looks as though it was taken in a cafe/restaurant because this setup is unusual for a home. The colours black and white seem to be the majority in this image with a few other colours displayed. There is a candle holder on the table which is bright red. This could suggest love and passion, perhaps if people were to be on a date at this table. Through the window, it shows to be daytime, which could show positive effects for the image as it looks like the weather is clear.

This image shows the back of a car which is parked next to a pole. There is a lot of litter on the part of the road that is visible to the viewer. The litter could suggest negativity as it is very commonly known that littering is wrong and bad for the environment. There is a lot of blue colouring in this image as the car is blue and the litter is also blue. This could imply depression and sorrow. The colour blue is also a symbol of cleanliness, which is ironic in this picture. 

This image is of a field of flowers. There are only 4 colours evident in this image with which 3 of them are very bold. The main colour is yellow, which is the flowers on the fields. This colour could suggest happiness and relaxation. There are multiple patches of purple flowers amongst the yellow flowers. The colour purple could suggest spirituality and mystery. The other main colour is the blue sky, which is cloud-free. This tells the viewer that the weather is good, therefore it adds to the positive connotations given off from this image. The colour that isn't so bold is the green patches in the fields. The brightness of these colours give the image positive effects. 

These examples of Eggleston's photography work show various use of colour use such as the last picture using complementary colours. I used these images as inspiration for my own photography work on colour.

Selected images

Contact sheet

Best images

Images that need improvement

The issue I had with this image is that it is out of focus on the whole of the item, as it is only focusing on the rear part of the item. The reason for capturing this is because the item has a variety of colours that are analogous and complementary. I took 2 pictures of this item but from different angles and different positions. I preferred the other image as it had a better angle capture and is more focused. The angle used in this image shows the lines of the table going in a different direction which makes it look irregular. If I were to take this photo again, I would make sure the focus is correct and perhaps use a different background setting, such as a plain table without lines, so that the angle used here would look more efficient for the item.

This image shows two colours that complement each other, but the composition of the items makes the image seem uneasy. The items aren't straight therefore the lines on them are going all over the place. Also, the chair legs in the background make the image seem poor as they are uneven and scattered about. To improve this image, I could have moved the chairs out of the capture completely, straightened out the items and taken the picture from a different perspective such as bird's eye view.




AO3 Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress
I intended to capture everyday things, such as flowers and signs, that have colour in it. To achieve this, I went around Harlow College campus and also into Harlow town centre taking pictures suiting this criteria. I did this because I was inspired by William Eggleston's work and tried to imitate the type of photographs he took, but in my own style. The difference in style that I interpreted was how modern my images were compared to Eggleston's.

With reference to my best images:

The image of the sign was taken from a lower up-tilted angle than the sign itself. I took this at the front of a building on Harlow College campus as it reminded me of the image by Eggleston of the petrol station. The reason I thought this had some similarity is because both images show part of a building with a sign using block colours. Eggleston's image grasps more in the image involving colour, but the simplicity of my image focuses on the colours in the sign, which was one of my intentions.

The purple headphone image was taken as an interpretation of William Eggleston style images. The interpretation made here is that it is of common things that have colour. I linked this to the image by Eggleston of table accents. Given that there are quite a few differences between the two images, such as what items they are and the variety of colours used, the main focus is of the things on the table having colour.

The purple flowers image was inspired by William Eggleston. I found an image in my research by Eggleston of a field with purple flowers, so I captured this image with Eggleston's image in mind. I took the image from a low, frontal position to capture the flowers with the leaves behind it. I did this so that I didn't only capture the flowers, just as Eggleston had done with his picture, capturing the field as well.

The image of the orange berries seemed similar to the image I had taken of purple flowers. I took this image with inspiration from Eggleston. The image Eggleston had taken of the flowers in a field was what I had in mind when taking the image. I was trying to capture the nature aspect of it with one dominant colour, orange (purple in Eggleston's image). I captured the image from a frontal angle standing directly infront of the plant. I needed to use the zoom tool on the camera for this.

AO2 Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops
To take my images, I used a Fuji Fineopix S9600. I used the zoom lens for a few pictures that I wanted to capture up-close. I didn't use a tripod for any images, but if I were to retake any images again for improvement, I would perhaps use a tripod. Instead, I took my images from different positions, such as kneeling down.



AO1 Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources demonstrating analytic and critical understanding
The images I took were all inspired by photographer William Eggleston. I did some research on Eggleston, finding out about his early life up to his adulthood when he took upon photography. I also found some examples of his work that I could visualise whilst going out and taking my own images. What I found was that he took pictures of things we see everyday that have a colourful aspect to them, such as a petrol station with a red petrol pump. Eggleston's images were taken in the 20th century, which they actually look old fashioned. From the images I selected, it is most obvious in the image of the car as it clearly shows the back of an outdated car. Cars these days typically have a different structure to the one in this image. I took inspiration from Eggleston's images and interpreted my own being more modern looking. I think my image that looks most like an image Eggleston would take would be the purple flowers. I think this because I found an image during my research of a field of purple flowers. Eggleston captured a field with numerous purple flowers whereas a I captured a bush covered with purple flowers, but both being completely different types of flower. These two images that I have compared have the same main feature which links them together.


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

Based on my research on William Eggleston, I took my pictures intending to capture colour in common things. I would say that I achieved this for all of my images as I took pictures from within the local area which were 'common' things such as flowers and signs. My images also linked to the images I found within research for my image bank. I selected images of everyday things that had colour in it. This, along with Eggleston's images, helped me to visualise what I was looking for when capturing my own images.










I edited my best 4 images using Photoshop to improve them. I imported them in the application and enhanced the colours in it.

To make these edits, I chose 'selective colour' from the adjustments panel. This allowed me to change the colour amounts. The main two colours that I changed were white and green. In white, I increased the level of magenta to brighten the purple in the flowers. My intention was to make the whole image appear more saturated than it originally was when I captured the flowers.

To adjust the level of green in the image, I increased the amount of cyan from 0 to +76, increased the level of magenta to +39, yellow to +29 and black to +33. These numbers weren't intended to be specific, I experimented with the different levels of colour until I found what I thought was best. The only other colour I changed in the image was yellow as this was in the green leaves and the centre of the flowers. No other colours were found that would make a huge difference to the image, so after this, the picture was complete. The result of the edited images are shown below: