Using Colour in Photography

Where it began:

I was the girl who wore red and pink together for years when everyone told me ‘it clashed’! I wore pink socks with red shoes, red sweaters with pink skirts…if I had red and pink in my wardrobe I’d be wearing it together!

Perhaps this fascination with pushing colour boundaries as a child (at the time when reds and pink clash – or do they still? – just like blue and green should never be seen – although some say unless another colour in between??) and colour theories was a start to my artistic venture and love for colour in design, art and photography. I do know that colour  set moods and emotions, it has power and can extend communication of an image further than you could imagine.

Consider this:

If one who obeys the ‘rules’ but never pushes them will rarely create a piece of divine work, then one must utilize the lessons and rules but unite these with creative imagination to produce their own stamp of individuality. Essentially…learn the rules with the sole notion to break the rules!

So is colour something considered when you seek a composition in photography? What do you know about colour and the theory to enhance, balance and strengthen an image?

As a painter, you would most definitely need to consider colour and understand their relation to one another because in order to create a painting, you are required to blend them to create new ones and apply theory regarding use of  primary, secondary, tertiary, complimentary amd harmonizing colours and of course the affect of intensity to colour.

Without babbling too much, as there are many places you can find further in depth information on theory of colour, I just want to express my personal thoughts to inspire others with the rules, lessons and experiences I have encountered as well as adding my individual artistic ability on how you can apply the simplest of ideas to your own photographic work.

To the point:

Essentially what we need to do to use colour effectively is to ‘look’ (well this is a good start of course) for interesting colour combinations.

Such combinations will be colours that compliment each other i.e. when you look at a common colour wheel complimentary colours are those that sit opposite such as purple and yellow or green and red (the colours of Christmas – perhaps even this is a marketing ploy…as I said, colours are powerful and when used with a good understanding can draw attention and emotion).

Another level from just understanding how colours behave, relate and their effect to the human eye, is that it can also create perspective in an image. Utilizing warm colours such as colour cast by a setting sun in a foreground will draw attention to and bring forward an image, whilst cooler colours such as a blue sky or water will fade out and move back such attention creating therefore…a beautiful three-dimensional flattering and empowering image with enhanced perspective!

An Example:

Notice the blue colours of the sky and water at the top and around the edges complimenting one another with the warmth of the sand and cliff faces in the foreground,  deepening perspective drawing your eye in and around the total image? Also note the intensity of the colours which are almost pastel and very light overall. The cool colours create a feeling of calm and relaxation. The warm colours promote comfort and passionate emotions. The overall ‘lightness’ created by the magical time of day at dusk,  create a feeling of openness and pastel colours evoke innocance and romance…

Put it all together and I see a mood lifting image connected with fond memories,tranquility and contentedness.

Moment of thought:

There is a vast array of lessons to be learnt in the art world and I’ve seen, heard and experienced many different areas of art, which I guess helps me today (which can help you now) as I can use all that I’ve learnt from art, design, illustrating and photography as well fields such as marketing and advertising. But likewise you may have experience from a variety of other sources that you can apply your own theories of colour. Think it over; what do you know about colour and how can you maximize your images and empower them My point I guess is that colour and it’s harmonious uses are all around us in every day living. Flowers, trees our natural environment makes great use of colour as I’ve mentioned before and this if nothing else, is something for you to look further at and understand how you can use colour better in your photography.

Be inspired and remember…

Art is acquired through lessons (of life?) and ripened through experience…

Lola

Photography Competition

For all of those non-professional photographers out there get in on this opportunity to show your work and win some amazing prizes including a choice of Canon, Nikon or Sony outfit to the value of $5000!

Better Photography Competition

Get in now, be inspired and good luck!

Lola

Camera Basics – Part 2 Chapter 1: Going Semi-Auto

Shutter Priority!

In Part 1 Chapter 1 of Camera Basics we looked ways of understanding Aperture Priority within your DSLR mode.

I am hoping you have had the chance to understand this feature as it is one I have used many times. The main thing to think about is ‘how’ you want the effect to look, then work out the best way to ensure you can get the effect using simple features of your DSLR. For example know you want to shoot an image of a flower with the background thrown out, so you will need a short depth of field, letting in more light with a larger aperture opening which means you need a small ‘f’ number to do it. It can get confusing but once you’ve tried it a few times, you’ll get the hang of it.

I’l be posting some projects on here relative to each part of the chapter to help along with the understanding.

But for now, lets get onto Shutter Priority.

This is actually the direct opposite of Aperture Priority, where you choose the shutter speed you want and the camera will calculate the aperture accordingly to ensure an accurate exposure. Simple yet taking control over creativity and doing away with auto mode.

So let’s get into it.
First of all let’s explain briefly a little on shutter speed and how best to understand it
I want to refer to the eye analogy like we did for the explanation of Aperture (where the pupil of our eye acts in similar way to the aperture in that it enlarges and shrinks reacting to light) but for this example our eyelids are like the shutter. It’s just a curtain that we hold control of in camera allowing in ‘more’ or ‘less’ light which gives us a correct (or incorrect) exposure. Ok?

Two extremes can occur where a fast shutter lets in only a very small amount of light as well as capturing only a very small amount of an image whereby you can ‘freeze’ action:

Likewise at the other end of the scale a slower shutter speed, allows more light to pass through allowing the film to record more of an image which will essentially blur any action:

Shutter speed is essentially pretty easy and perhaps best if we leave it there for our first attempt at taking you off auto mode.

There are a number of techniques once the basics are mastered such as learning how to ‘pan’ a subject such as a car as its going past you. This is where you would have your camera on a tripod, and you follow the moving subject ‘panning’ across whilst depressing the shutter button whereby capturing the subject and blurring the background. Great for track day events – but don’t try it on the Grand Prix cos they just move so damn fast you will need to get a bit more experience before trying this one out!

Few things to bear in mind:
Keep an eye on the Aperture even though the camera will select this automatically for you once you’ve chosen the shutter speed. The reason is that your aperture may be restricted by the type of lens you have and if you choose a shutter speed which the camera wants an f2.8 aperture for (to enable a correct exposure) and your lens has only a minimum of f3.5 then it will be limited by the aperture on your lens and produce an under exposed (dark) image. This is where it becomes a bit of a balancing act where you may have to chose a slower shutter, to allow more light in to ensure a correct exposure.

Tip: A work around for this can be to lighten the ‘films’ (the sensor) sensitivity in this case by increasing the ISO, however bear in mind this may make a grainier/noisier looking image but may just be enough to work.

Essentially if you make the opening smaller (aperture) and make the curtain open for longer (shutter) then you should be near to a good balance of sufficient light and a correct exposure.
But if you have a small opening (big aperture) and short curtain opening time (fast shutter) it wont be enough light coming through potentially and something will have to give. So you then need to get more light in by 1) extending the curtain time or 2) reducing the aperture to a smaller f/stop number which enlarges the hole size and therefore…more light!

Give Shutter Priority a go and let me know how you get on and if this article was at all helpful 🙂

Lola

Adobe Online Festival

For all of those who use Adobe Creative Suite then you must check out the latest edition of Adobes’ own Online Creative Festival taking place on Tuesday 27th October.

It takes place, you guessed it, online and yup it’s FREE!
All you need to do is register, check out the agenda and diarise the time slots or block out the whole day (11am-4pm).

This is Adobes’ 4th edition of the festival and can be great to take part in even if you don’t use or have the latest edition of Photoshop.
You can locate useful resources and find out where to go for additional online tutorials, join a user group or perhaps you’ve been wanting to find out how to create a pdf portfoilo…

I can’t vouch enough for how useful these festivals can be to both professional and amateur photographers. The capability to watch online in the comfort of your own desk, whilst being able to interact and chat live with the experts is more than enough to inspire you and get you motivated. You can even have access to Adobes resellers who usually offer some pretty good deals!

If you feel like it, you can upload an image to the Gallery which gets voted on and the winner announced on the day; the topic is iGeneration.

You can find the agenda and online registry here:

Adobe Online Creative Festival

Lola

Camera Basics – Part 1 Chapter 1: Going Semi-Auto

Manual or Automatic…

Thats what you get with vehicles these days with majority of the bigger cars on auto (my car wasn’t even available in manual!)

However a lot of cars these days (mine included) are not just fully automatic transmissions, they come with an ‘activematic’ or ‘tiptronic’ mode allowing you to have some manual feel and control over the drive of the car. This allows the driver to take over some of the decisions in relation to the gears creating a more engaging drive.

Now, with this method of taking control in mind think of your DSLR. Do you rely on the fully auto mode but crave to be a little daring and take some creative control?

With the fully auto mode all of the decisions are made for you. Sure it’s easy and gets you from A to B and the output provides you with a seemingly satisfactory end result. You get a picture…but couldn’t you have got those with a happy snap compact?
Lets use the car analogy again for a moment. Imagine you’re driving along a scenic road like the famous Great Ocean Road in Victoria, Australia, where ideally you want an open topped convertible with manual gear to really feel the road, experience the turns and ‘make the decisions’ as to when to pull more torque or hold the gear for those miles of glorious tight curves. (I may be speaking from experience driving that exact road in a late model MX-5 manual vs a late model Mazda 6 wagon auto).

Like wanting the experience of the convertible manual geared car, you want the creativity of engaging with your camera and capturing the image using the functions you crave to use, to engage and make decisions knowing ‘you’ created the end result…not the camera.
You have the opportunity to pick auto and manual or even the in between such as the tiptronic car (choice of full auto with option to flick across enabling two positions to upshift and downshift), all at the twist of a button on your camera dial. Yes it’s a little daunting at first trying to remember it all – the aperture, the shutter speed, ISO – do I want big numbers or little numbers…which one gives me which effect?!

I’m here to tell you it’s not that scary and we’re going to discuss briefly just one option to get you on your way. We’re going with Tiptronic (semi-automatic) version as a first step. We want to try and get you off the full auto mode without complicating it too much! Lets try yes?

First of all you need to think about what you’re taking a photo of and the outcome you would like.

What are you taking pictures of?
> Portrait – of a friend where you want to have a short depth of field (blurring the background)
> Landscape – where you want most of the frame / image to be sharp

What effect do you want of your subject?
> Do you want the whole image sharp front to back or are you focussing on one central spot where you want the remainder to be blurred?

When you’ve decided on the subject and the effect you want, lets look at some of the easy options to get you there.
The following list contains the most common terminologies used on all DSLRs (excluding scene modes such as night, portrait etc as these are essentially still auto modes) and you will find these settings on your DSLR, probably located on the the top left as a dial:

– ADEP (Canon) Automatic Depth-of-field mode
– M Manual exposure mode
– AV/A Aperture priority mode (Aperture Value)
– TV/S Shutter priority/Action shot mode (Time Value)
– P Program AE mode – shutterspeed (exposure) and aperture set automatically

For a choice in creativity lets go with the ‘AV – Aperture Priority’ mode where we can create short and long depth of fields, in other words how much is in focus surrounding (behind and in front) of your focal point. This mode gives you the opportunity to manually select the aperture where the camera will automatically select the shutter speed to ensure a correctly exposed image. Perfect!

A little on Aperture first in small steps – What is it?
Aperture is in essence a hole through which light passes allowing the image you capture to be recorded on film or in our case using a DSLR, the sensor.
Using another analogy, think of your eyes in particular the pupils. Your pupils will dilate (become larger) opening up and allowing more light to pass through to the optic nerve (the sensor on your camera) for you to be able to see better. Likewise on a bright day, your pupils will be small, reducing the amount of light to the nerve (sensor).

Remember: Small hole, less light. Big hole, more light.

Note each aperture, or hole, from left to right has double the surface of the next and therefore reducing the amount of light by half at each stop. You will also note the f-number increases as the hole reduces/ gets smaller. This is important and one not to allow yourself to get confused with. Don’t let it – trial and error and usage will see you get it in no time.

Remember: Small hole, less light, BIG f-number. Big Hole, more light, SMALL f-number.

Now to the point of using apertures for creativity.

The reduction of the aperture with its bigger f-number, means longer depth of field. Now this means its ideal for landscape images to ensure a sharp inage all the way through.

Example of small aperture, small hole, BIG number creating long depth of field:

Of course then the increase of aperture with its smaller f-number means a shorter depth of field. This is usually ideal for portraits, close up images of flowers for example:

I won’t go into too much more detail than that as I think too much info can only cause confusion.

So we know what we’re taking a photo of, we know a little about what Aperture is and we know what effect the size of the aperture can have on our images.

Why not give AV/Aperture Priority a go today.
It’s a semi-automatic mode where YOU decide and control the aperture size. If you’re shooting landscapes choose a longer depth of field to get all of the image in sharper/in focus and if shooting flowers or portraits choose a shallower/shorted depth of field to throw out the focus and blur everything you’ve not got you focal point on.

Remember the small numbers create large open apertures giving longer depth of field so most of the image is sharp and bigger numbers will have smaller apertures (great for indoors allowing more light to the sensor) giving you a wonderful blurred background.

Please note: Not all lenses will go down to f1.4 or even f2.8. These usually cost a little more for these type of lenses however you may have one that steps down to f3.5/f4. This will still give you enough to throw out the background for a superb portrait shot.

Next time we’ll try to master the next semi-auto mode, Shutter Priority!

Good luck and please feel free to post your feedback and ask questions!

Lola

Depth of Field Calculator

For those who are on a Mac then make sure you download this great widget as a reference to calculate DOF.
http://i360.tv/DOFC_widget_en”>DoF Calculator

Now for many who know their equipment and lenses won’t need to both with this, but for those that come from 35mm film to digital may need a little re-adjusting period 🙂

For those of you unfamiliar with why and ‘what’ Depth of Field really means for you and why you need to calculate it well….here’s a summary:

Depth of Field relates to the amount of image that is in focus or should we say, the part of the image that is sharp. Now you may be thinking that you focus on a single point/subject/area and that one point is in focus and that’s that. But whilst technically this is true our eyes have a binoculor vision where each eye has a different viewpoint, we see with two eyes and our brain then interprets those two images to create a ‘single’ 3D image. So actually we see more than the single point your camera focussed on. We can see areas both in front of and behind the point of focus.

Essentially, your Aperture range is what comes into effect here and I highlight ‘effect’ because whether you choose a small or large aperture will greatly determine the depth of field outcome.
Now say you have 3 subjects lined up on a row and you focus on the centre subject.
Depending on the aperture you choose, which may depend on creativity and therefore intention to create short/long Dof, or it may depend on lighting situation but either way you can have one of two effects:

1) The foreground AND background can be in focus as well as the centre item, which means you would choose a small aperture (the big numbers!) to create the longer range of DoF. Meaning more is sharp and in focus.

2) The foreground AND background can be out of focus, whilst the centre item is sharp and in focus, meaning everything besides the line of focal point will be blurred.

There is much more in depth discussions on Depth of Field calculations and the relative topic on Circle of Confusion (which depends on your camera model e.g. 35mm film is 0.025mm) and Hyperfocal Distances (area between your lens and focal point that will be out of focal range) but without going into too much detail and confusing you, you can use the DoF calculator (link above) to assist you.

Just don’t exert yourself with information taking all the fun out of being creative; learn the basics of your equipment, grasp the fundamental techniques with shutter speed, ISO and apertures, be creative with your approach (get inspired with the posts in this blog already and more being added each week) and find your ‘sweet spot’ for each of yours lenses (aperture where your lens is sharpest!)

Happy Shooting

Lola

Location Location Location

Landscape photography – Is it about the right weather, at the right time, at the right place? Or is it just a bit of patience good luck? (some of which I have neither of)

Well to be honest I think it’s perhaps a little from column ‘A’ and a little from column ‘B’…
But essentially, if you plan, research and consider a few important aspects before you go a trekking, you could save yourself a lot of bother and heartache.

Firstly – know where you’re going!
– Many a good landscape photographers don’t just ‘rock up’ to a location and get their award winning images straight up.
Take the time to visit the area first, perhaps at different times of day and season. What a location looks in one season and particular light, can dramatically change in mood in another.

Secondly – Study the area
– Go for walks with a compact camera and look all around; take the time to really study the area and make a note where the sun rises and sets, whether you need more light, or less, bright or cloudy
conditions.. where will you come back to for first light? (another good point – pack a note book and pen!)

Thirdly – Define the mood
– Now you found the place and the made notes on what light and time of day is best, now decide what feeling you get from the location.
– Ask yourself:
– How do I wish to portray this location?
– Is it suitable for a panoramic style image, or perhaps you see more fitting a tight crop on a particular detail within the landscape to express it’s mood and appearance?
– How have other photographers portrayed, if any, such a location?
– What weather will I need to emphasise such a mood?

Lastly – Considerations
– Remember to think about how you will process the image post capture;
i.e. is there enough contrast to produce a stunning black and white or is there such infinite array of colour that it should be maximized for what and how it is?
– When you think you’ve found a good spot, take a good look around you. Pretend there is a cordoned area of 1m square and look within every inch of it (well almost)… you’ll be amazed at what you find!
– Flick through magazines for inspiration before you head out to further ignite the passion and get inspiration and ideas – and don’t stick to just photographic ones; australian geographic, travel and
outdoor and even gardening mags are all great resources..and don’t forget your local information centre with plenty of free visitor info (with plenty of images to direct and tantalize your taste buds!)

Well, that’s about all I can think of and all that I’ve gone through in prep for my next venture..

But if you happen to have an iphone, there are also some great apps for calculating sunrise/sunset times and locations for future dated positioning! (Something I’m working on getting myself)

Most of all…go and get out there and flick your camera to manual mode – just give it a go 🙂

Lola