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.