Week 4 - Exercises in Color and Light

For this week's blog post, please post two color photos that show an example of the three color schemes shown on the slideshows above: monochrome, analogous or complementary. You choose which two to represent.

Also this week you are to take the photograph of something in three different lighting situations. I do not expect you to get this assignment done quickly. You may choose an outdoor or indoor shot and the light involved. Stretch yourself. How about the same tree in early morning, mid day and sunset? How about thinking about the way the following affects a picture: sun, the camera's flash, ceiling lights, spot lights, a tv, a lamp, windows, etc. By next Monday I want you to post the three shots and tell us about your process taking them. What worked and what didn't.

This week I chose to do two photos of both an analogous and a monochromatic color scheme.

Monochrome:

Analogous:


The first picture above is of a cosplay wig I received on a set of red bedsheets. The colors are basically a tint of one another and thus monochromatic. The second is of my old broken moped and the tarp that was thrown on our porch. Green and blue are next to one another on the color wheel but not touching, hence why they are analogous.

-------------------

For the second portion of the week, I worked on taking some pictures of a wooden sculpture I've had since I was a child. I took photos at night, in the early morning, and midday inside.

This is the one taken during the day:

I decided to play around with staging the lighting a bit and both of the following shots were taken during the night or early morning. I used mirrors to reflect the light in different directions to get a very different look for each. I found that manipulating the lighting manually made for a greater level of specification. ie I could choose which features to bring out and which to leave dark. I really like high contrast in photos so it was fun to be able to bring the light around multiple sides of the figure and leave the folds of the wood in deep shadow. This wouldn't work so well in daylight. The second photo below utilized this same floor lamp and two small round mirrors. I angled the mirrors using clay so that they would illuminate the front of the sculpture while the light was behind it. Keeping the light behind the sculpture makes for a very backlit figure and a strong outer line, while the mirrors reflected upon the face to capture detail.