Project 37: Filters with Black & White Film

Although this prjoect is designed for film SLRs I thought I would take the opportunity to look at the various ways I can convert a coloured image into black & white, using Photoshop, and in particular changing the various colour sliders. My understanding of black & white photography is fairly elementary, and my approach has always been to reduce the saturation sliders, or occassionally using some of the presets in Photoshop for example "Urban Landscape" or "Infrared". I thought this project would be a good opportunity to actually look at what happens when an image is converted to black & white. I chose a similar subject to the study notes, with bold blocks of colour to clearly demonstrate the effects of different adjustments. I then edited this is Photoshop CS4 using 2 methods. Firstly I used the standard black & white conversion tool (Image>Adjustments>Black & White) and played with the colour sliders. Secondly, I also experimented with colour channels (RGB) which is a new venture for me. The latter proved to be very useful as I discovered that the channel mixer contains presets which are equivalent to the filter effects shown in the study notes. That is they include the lightening effect on the same colour and the darkening effect on the complementary colour. I finished off the project by applying what I had learnt using the stock image to a rural landscape image converted to black & white. Overall this has been an excellent experiment to enhance my knowledge of colour in relation to digital photography, and it's use in black & white conversion.

Project 36: Warm & Cool Colours

Well this is the final colour project, requiring 3 images:

1. Composed entirely of cool colours
2. Composed entirely of warm colours
3. Displaying contrast of warm & cool colours

Emotionally, warm colours are vivid and energetic, and tend to advance in space. They include reds, oranges & yellows. Cool colours have a calm soothing effect and include green, blue & purple. The first thing that I noticed is how many of my photos contain cool colours. Blue is my favourite colour, and I like images which are "soothing" so perhaps that is why I am unconsciously drawn to creating those sort of images. Perhaps it is because we have just gone through winter, where cool colours are more abundant, compared to the warming colours of Autumn. I will be using several of those images in Assignment 2.

For the warm & cool contrast, I chose to photograph Blyth beach huts in low sun. This brought out the warmth further in the appropriately painted doors, and in the wood surround, but contrasted against the blue sky. I also photographed a lifebuoy in the same light - thanks to fellow blogger "Purple Cactus" for his texture that I used to give the image a retro seaside look.

Project 35: Colour Relationships

Much of this project overlaps with Assignment 2, dealing with colour relationships. I have learnt a few things from researching this further on the internet which I thought I would note down for future reference.

1. Sir Isaac Newton invented the first colour wheel in 1666 (Same year as The Great Fire of London) after splitting sunlight.
2. The colour wheel is a visual representation of colour theory, and represents the colour spectrum wrapped into a circle.
3. The current form of colour theory was developed by Johannes Itten.
4. According to colour theory, harmonious colour combinations use any two colours opposite each other on the colour wheel, any three colours equally spaced around the colour wheel forming a triangle, or any four colours forming a rectangle (actually, two pairs of colors opposite each other). The harmonious colour combinations are called colour schemes – sometimes the term 'colour harmonies' is also used. Colour schemes remain harmonious regardless of the rotation angle.

I find the term complementary quite confusing when it refers to colour relationships, as it implies something blending well together whereas complementary colours are intinsically high contrast. They are colours that are often advised not to be worn together ("Red & Green should never be seen etc") and are really bad for text. However they do create strong vibrant images.

Some further information I found really helpful on the internet included the following:

A Monochromatic Colour Scheme - this uses variations in lightness and saturation of a single colour. This scheme looks clean & elegant and produces a soothing effect. It is very easy on the eyes, especially with green or blue hues. This is something I would like to try with photography.

Analogous Colour Scheme - this uses colours that are adjacent to each other on the colour wheel and is also referred to as "similar colours" in the course notes. One colour is used as a dominant colour whilst others are used to enrich the scheme. It is similar to monochromatic, but offers more nuances.

Split Complementary Colour Scheme - this is a variation of the standard complementary scheme. It uses a colour and the 2 colours adjacent to its complementary. This provides high contrast without the high tension of the complementary scheme.

A Triadic Colour Scheme - this uses 3 colours equally spaced around the colour wheel. This offers strong visual contrast while retaining colour harmony and richness. It is not as contrasting as the complementary scheme, but looks more balanced and harmonious.

Quite a lot to get to grips with really! I am finding it really hard to commit to memory, and always have to consult the colour wheel to remind myself which colours are in which relationship.
This project was in 2 parts. The first part required 3 photos demonstrating the complementary colour relationships, with an attempt to balance the colours in the equilibrium proportions as follows:

• Red:Green 1:1
• Orange:Blue 1:2
• Yellow:Violet 1:3

At least 1 should be in those proportions, however I need to be aware of the "imbalance" for those not in the correct proportions. The easiest shot to capture was red & green, as both colours are commonplace and it is fairly easy to achieve 1:1 balance. I haven't worked out if there is a way to measure the colours (e.g. pixel count) and therefore prove the proportions however I think my red & green image feels quite balanced. It's not so obvious because of the different shapes of the red & green within the image (lines of red vs a block of green). This image is perhaps not the easiest example either because the green is much lighter than the red.

For the violet & yellow combination, flowers seemed the most obvious source of such an image. The violet is much more dominant in the image than the yellow so this is not in equilibrium so to speak.

Finding orange & blue was a bit trickier. The richest source of orange that I could see at this time of year comes from streetlights. Therefore I attempted to create a blue & orange image using reflections of streetlights & sky. However the rain wasn't playing ball, so I couldn't find a puddle of sufficient size which would give me the required 1:2 proportions. However I was pleased with the final image, and it has given me inspiration for an image when we next get heavy rain and it is convenient to go out photographing.

The second part of the project required 3 -4 images of any strong colours that appeal. This was much easier as I felt less restricted in looking for a certain colour pair.

Project 34: Black & White & Grey as Colours

This project required me to photograph a white, black & grey scene (or more than 1) and observe the effect of exposure on the colours and tones. As with the other colour projects (but not assignment 2) I have not been very exciting with the choice of subject, as the core focus of the project is on the colours.

In my white scene with the milk bottle on a white background, there was clear evidence of colour as the scene got darker, with blue tones in the background and yellow hues on the cloth that the milk bottle was resting on. I have often noticed yellow hues when I have taken scenes with a white background; I tend to correct those in Photoshop. The milk bottle itself seemed to get grey as the exposure got darker rather than coloured. I also photographed some white laundry which required overexposure to get rid of the grey. The classic white scene, which I have a lot of in my portfolio from recent months, is a snowy scene. The old adage is to dial in +2 i.e. "overexpose" by 2 stops as opposed to the light meter correct reading. However it was interesting how a lot of my snow shots looked blue, although I also used did some post editing to warm up some images by introducing some golden tones. Snow shots with all the colour removed seemed to look overexposed as there was too much glare.

For the black scene, I have fewer such examples from my archive (although owning a pet with black fur would probably give me some examples!). As anticipated, most of my shots showed grey rather than black. I did not see much colour in my "blacks" although my background was non reflective card. In order to get the black to be black would have caused loss of detail in the lenses, which were more pure black than the background. Correctly exposing a black scene is a technical skill I would like to master.

I wasn't totally sure about the project requirements for a grey scene, particularly as many black scenes that I took ended up to be grey. I have uploaded some examples.

The notes do refer to colour bias of films, which is not really applicable to digital, although white balance management is relevant. My experience has generally been to trust the camera to set the correct white balance, and any mishaps are easily corrected in Lightroom. Sometimes I change the WB settings to alter the mood of an image. Other such tricks include setting WB to "Cloudy" to enhance Autumnal landscape colours. My key learning outcome from this project has been to understand the difficulties of correctly exposing for white & black scenes, whereby the colours are kept pure but the detail is not lost, either in the highlights or shadows, as well as gaining some experience of spotting colour is supposedly neutral scenes.

Project 33: Making a Slide Library of Colours - Secondary Colours

For this project I decided not to upload the 3 different exposures for the 3 secondary colours as I feel I have grasped the impact of exposure on colour by now. However I managed to scan a copy of the colour wheel and use this for colour samples in Photoshop. This allowed much closer comparison of the colours in my images against the sampled colours from the wheel as I used the latter to frame each of the images. Remarkably, the violet images were closest in purity to the colour wheel. Images that I considered orange contained large amounts of yellow impurities. What was also apparent is that I naturally chose flowers and foodstuffs for this project, although in the UK winter they are the richest sources of secondary colours. As the course goes on, and particularly in Assignment 2, I will ensure that my colour subjects are much wider.

Project 32: Making a Slide Library of Colours - Primary Colours

I think that digital photography, and opportunities for post processing, have revolutionised colour understanding for the man on the street. Taking readings, changing exposure, satuation and vibrance post shutter, mean that capturing certain colours is much more accessible. On reading the notes, I have great sympathy for those using film, as the time delay between pressing the shutter and viewing the pictures must make it so difficult to remember what settings were used etc. etc.

For this project, there is some ambiguity over whether the choice of subject should be imaginative. The notes clearly state that it matters more that colour is found in any form than you find imaginative subjects. The next project (33) then states "As with the last project, please use your imagination to find interesting occurrences of these colours". My interpretation is that the subject itself does not need to be innovative however the colour itself should be anything other than paint! Food materials & flowers clearly lend themselves to red and yellow, and a whole range of blues was created by photographing the sky in the afternoon and after sundown. I think the subjects I chose come pretty close to the colour wheel in the notes, however Photoshop gives plenty opportunity to sample your colour, using the eye dropper, which allows you to see it without the "distraction" of subject matter.

Another question that has occured to me relates to the definition of "pure". Although not defined in the notes, I have taken this to mean it does not contain other colours. Taking the chillis as an example, they look pure to my naked eye and appear to closely match the colour wheel red in the notes. However the info window in Photoshop shows that they do contain small amounts of green and even less blue, and this is the case wherever I hover the sample point. This was also the case with the pepper, and the red reading was even lower for the pepper than the chilli. Therefore my conclusion for the reds is that it is pretty hard to find a pure form, where pure is defined as no green or blue registering on the info window in Photoshop. The yellow pepper was a similar story. Obviously yellow doesn't feature on RGB, but looking at the CYMK readings showed yellow at 100, with a very low reading of cyan (7) and marginal magenta (43). Still not pure! Even the blue skies did not show a pure reading. Interestingly though, the mid range blue, which correlated closest to the colour wheel blue, showed the highest ratio of blue to other colours on the info window.

I'm not sure whether I am getting too hung up on the info window readings in Photoshop, as they stop you seeing and instead judging by numbers. However it has been a useful exercise to compare the readings against the colours I chose to be "pure" from my naked eye. This is likely to be an ongoing process as I continue through the course.

Project 30 & 31 : Colour Control & Analysing a Colour

I am quite pleased to have reached the stage of starting on the colour projects, as assignment 2 is on colour. It feels like a lot of ground is covered between assignments 1 & 2, without as much time as I would like to devote to these key areas.

The aim of this project was to produce 5 photos over a range of exposures to assess the impact on colour. As usual I was racing against time to complete this before it got dark, as I was on my way home from work, hence the long exposures. I photographed a green church door near home, and it was immediately apparent that the impact of exposure on colour was to darken or lighten it. By lighten, I mean bleaching or washing out, which I think is distinct from brightness. Having read various discussions on forums about projects 30 & 31, it would appear that there is quite a lot of confusion over terms used when describing and classifying colours, and some are used interchangeably when in fact they are distinct - bright vs light. However what is critical to me is my perception of colour and the qualities of it. So for me, the words that come to my mind is that underexposure makes colour richer in depth whereas overexposure makes the colour paler, bleached and washed out. I can think of other examples where I notice this effect. On a sunny day, the sky appears white to my naked eye. When I put sunglasses on (akin to reducing exposure by an ND grad) it makes the sky appear rich blue. A similar effect is seen when using gradient filters either on camera or in image editing. Another example was on viewing my father in law's holiday snaps, most of which were taken in the middle of the day in bright sunlight. They were lacking in colour, as the colours were washed out by overexposure as a result of high contrast.

Another learning point from this project was the "info" window in Photoshop. I've never used this before but I was able to line up the series and look at the readings. Using RGB, the green reading increased as the exposure increased. This wasn't what I was initially expecting intuitively, as I thought the bleaching of the colour would reduce the reading. However what the RGB reading is actually telling me is the luminosity of the colour, so obviously the reading will increase as the exposure increases. What was of more interest was that the K reading on the CYMK scale decreased from 70% at the darkest exposure to 0% by the 10s exposure. K stands for the key plate (a printing term), which generally equates to the amount of black ink. Therefore darker colours have more black in them, and this effect on colour can also be seen in RAW by moving the black slider. For the lightest images, where the K reading was 0%, moving the black slider has little effect on the colour, although it makes it appear even brighter because the other areas of the image become darker. As soon as there is a K reading, then playing with the black slider can reduce the colour in the door to pure black.

I believe that the course notes are currently undergoing a rewrite to reflect the move to digital, and I must admit that I do find the regular references to film very confusing and distracting as I have never used a film SLR before. This hasn't been an issue with previous elements of the course which were more concerned with what the arrangement of what's in the viewfinder. Another area of confusion is due to "misprints" in project 31, whereby the project starts with the statement "The brightness of a colour can change and how you set the level of exposure determines this". The notes then go onto state that only hue can be altered at the time of shooting, and specifically states that you cannot alter brightness of colour as you shoot. Clearly contradictory, however my understanding is that the initial statement should have read "The lightness of a colour can change, depending on exposure settings". Therefore I could make a bright colour (say bright pink) lighter, by changing exposure settings, but I could not make a bright pink even brighter until I go into photoediting. This is something I hope I will get a greater grasp of when I move onto the next projects to create a slide library of colours.