Here is an important element I used for this exercise, a colour wheel based in red, yellow and blue primaries and their complementary opposites (green, violet and orange).
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| colour wheel |
And the other important feature I used for the exercise is the camera's bracketing exposure, setting it to +/-0.5.
I've tried to take pictures dominated by one of the six colours shown above.
Let's start from the red one:
I had a perfect subject for this exercise. I went to my family's farm to go for a walk in the vegetable garden, but I found these recently collected tomatoes in the kitchen, next to the window.
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| Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Tamron 90 mm macro f/2,8 f 5,6 1/90s ISO 200 Camera on tripod. |
Then I changed the shutter speed half a stop and the results are that the picture is overexposured and the colours are brighter. The white background is totally washed out and the red is less saturated which makes the pictures less atractive.
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| Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Tamron 90 mm macro f/2,8 f 5,6 1/60s ISO 200 Camera on tripod. |
I also made another shot, but this time I underexposed half a stop the original picture. Here the background takes more importance because the details in it are more substantial and the red is more saturated. As I remember, I've to tell that this one is the picture which best reflects the scene as I saw it really, but if i had to choose the one I like most I would select the original shot with the exposure set by the camera.
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| Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Tamron 90 mm macro f/2,8 f 5,6 1/125s ISO 200 Camera on tripod. |
So having finished with the red, let's show what happens with the orange dominating pictures. In the first moment I thought anout shooting a still life with oranges and tangerines but having used tomatoes for the red colour I didn't want to be repetitive, so I changed my mind and went to shoot a seascape at sunset.
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| Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Nikkor 70-300mm f/4,0-5,6 f 16 1/60s ISO 200 Focal length: 145 mm Camera on tripod. |
And then I took two more pictures, one half a stop darker and the other one half a stop brighter.
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| Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Nikkor 70-300mm f/4,0-5,6 f 16 1/90s ISO 200 Focal length: 145 mm Camera on tripod. |
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| Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Nikkor 70-300mm f/4,0-5,6 f 16 1/45s ISO 200 Focal length: 145 mm Camera on tripod. |
Here we can see that in the third picture the orange is getting much brighter, so it gets a yellowish appearance. But in the second pictures the orange becomes very saturated and helps to add drama and interest to the picture. I also have noticed that there is less difference in the darker parts of the images, between the average exposure and the underexposured image. The same thing occurs with the orange sky but in the original shot there's less contrast and the variation between different orange tonalities is softer.
In conclusion, the half a stop underexposed picture is more dramatic because it's more contrasty and the orange is richer and that makes the sunset a little bit more interesting. Another thing it would help the picture to be more balanced is cropping a little from the top and bottom sides because it shows too much sea and sky.
The next colour in the wheel is yellow, so let's shoot it!
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Nikkor 18-55mm f/3,5-5,6 f 11 1/30s ISO 1250 Focal length: 38 mm |
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Nikkor 18-55mm f/3,5-5,6 f 11 1/20s ISO 1250 Focal length: 38 mm |
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Nikkor 18-55mm f/3,5-5,6 f 11 1/45s ISO 1250 Focal length: 38 mm |
Trying to find some original shots for the exercise, I've chosen these cathedral interior images because the sun was introducing though the large windows and the combination of this with the architecture prouced a warm yellowish scene. Here the exposure change was very small to apreciate some changes in the colour. The second one is clearly brighter than the others but appart from showing a greater quantity of white on it I can't find much difference in the saturation of the yellow. So I'can't tell which image I like best; maybe the last one shows more details.
Next colour: green. This was, in my opinion, the easiest shot of this exercise because there are so many green subjects in nature. Thinking about the exercise, I decided to photography different tones of green to see the differences between them.
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Tamron 90 mm macro f/2,8 f 8 1/125s ISO 800 |
And the varied the exposure:
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Tamron 90 mm macro f/2,8 f 8 1/90s ISO 800 |
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Tamron 90 mm macro f/2,8 f 8 1/180s ISO 800 |
Here we have to difference two parts in the picture: the light green leaves and the dark green leaves. In the three pictures as the saturation increases as the brightness decreases. The overexposed shot shows the green colours washed out, making the image less attractive. The underexposed picture is very interesting because the dark green leaf looks interesting while the background is less distracting. But I find the shadow of the bright leaf too saturated so I think the average shot works better this time.
Next step in the colour wheel is blue. I thought about shooting the sky at noon or something like that at first but I changed my mind and tried to shoot a still life and try to experiment with flash gels. So I used an off camera flash and put a blue gel on it, to make the picture a little bit more blueish and I also added a blue background, because my subject was a semitransparent perfume bottle.
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Nikkor 18-55mm f/3,5-5,6 f 32 1/125s ISO 640 Focal length: 48 mm Camera on tripod. |
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Nikkor 18-55mm f/3,5-5,6 f 32 1/90s ISO 640 Focal length: 48 mm Camera on tripod. |
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Nikkor 18-55mm f/3,5-5,6 f 32 1/180s ISO 640 Focal length: 48 mm Camera on tripod. |
Here the appearance of the blue background changes with the exposure because saturation and brightness vary. The picture in the middle, the brighter one, shows more reflections than the other two and the darker the picture is the more misterious appearance it has, but in my opinion the last picture is too dark, so the best shot is the first one.
And the last colour in this exercise is purple. It's the last and the most difficult to find and shoot it also, but I found some beautiful flowers in a park and decided to shoot them for the exercise. And while I was shooting a guest came and posed for me.
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Tamron 90mm macro f/2,8 f 11 1/2000s ISO 800 |
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Tamron 90mm macro f/2,8 f 11 1/1500s ISO 800 |
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Tamron 90mm macro f/2,8 f 11 1/3000s ISO 800 |
Here the exposure variation shows that purple colour can look very different changing slightly the aperture or the shutter speed. When I opened half a stop the aperture the resulting image showed the flowers nearly white, the colour loses details. On the other hand, when I closed half a stop the lens the purple is more intense as it can be seen in the petals, altough the rest of the image is dark and it has too much black shadows. But if I bear in mind only the purple colour, this is the shot which shows the colour as I saw it then. I think it's one opportunity to use the camera's centre weighted metering.
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