Sunday 12 May 2013

Colour Relationships Pt 1

Exercise: Colour relationships (3 photographs for the first part, 3-4 for the second part)

The previous exercise was all about single colours, whereby this exercise is all about placing two or more colours together. The exercise is in two parts, the first is to produce one photograph for each combination of primary and secondary colours.

As stated in the course notes, colours that are opposite to each other on the colour circle appear to balance each other. They have a naturally harmonious relationship, and so are called complementary. 

Because the hues vary from dark to light you need to take into account the relative brightness. If you remember earlier in this blog I talked about the colour circle and Geothe's Theory of colours, Yellow, the lightest hue having a light value of 9 and violet having a value of 3. 

With this in mind the photographs would have to show the complimentary colours in the correct proportions.

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

With red and green having the same brightness, the proportion of red and green in the picture above are approximately the same 

Orange/Blue 1:2

With orange being being twice as bright as blue the proportions of the colours were adjusted in the above photograph of a life ring at the beach by varying the focal length of the zoom lens to give the correct ratio.  

Yellow/Violet 1:3

Similarly with yellow being three times brighter than violet, the proportions in the above photograph were adjusted by cropping in post production to give the correct ratio. 


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