Exercise: Colour relationships

This exercise is divided in two parts. In the first one, we have to produce  one potograph for each combination of primary and secondary colours, adjusting the distance, focal lengthor framing to compose the picture to the next proportions:

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

So let's start with the red-green combination.

Camera body: Nikon d90
Lens: Nikkor 70-300 mm f/4,0-5,6
Focal Length: 190 mm
f/11    1/250s   ISO 800

I took this picture in my last trip to London. We went to Buckingham Palace to watch the Guard Change. I placed myself in a good location and while I waited the Guards I looked for a green background to balance the Guards red jackets. When they appeared I adjusted my focal length to shoot as much green as red in the image. I was afraid that the floor could break the balance between the green and red colours but I think it works well.

This one was the easiest image in this part of the exercise because it's not difficult to find green or red subjects to photography. But the other two pictures were not going to be as easy. Here's the next combination: orange-blue.

Camera body: Nikon d90
Lens: Nikkor 18-55 mm f/3,5-5,6
Focal Length: 50 mm
f/18    3 sec.   ISO 200
Camera on tripod.

I used a sunset to complete the blue-orange combination. Here the tricky part of the exercise was in the water reflections. I found difficult to calculate the 1:2 relation. I've never been very good calculating distances and proportions; but here I had to put my attention also in how much orange was reflected in the water to set the focal distance and save the 1:2 proportion.  

I included the branches for two reasons. One obvious, that I couldn't find a place to remove from the framing and the other because in my opinion they added some interest on the top where there is too much sky shown to compensate the 1:2 proportion.

And finally we have the third combination: Yellow-violet. 

Camera body: Nikon d90
Lens: Tamron 90 mm f/2,8
f/5,6    1/125 s   ISO 200

The third picture has to combine yellow and violet in a proportion of 1:3 because yellow is much brighter than violet so it needs a third part of this quantity to balance the framing. To get this proportion I had to crop the framing much more than in the images above. Here we also have green colour which in my opinion helps to make the image more appealing.

The second part of the exercise consists in producing some images which feature colour combination that appeal to me. This is the first one:

Camera body: Nikon d90

Lens: Nikkor 18-55mm f/3,5-5,6

f/11   1/500 s   ISO 500

Focal length: 20 mm

Here we have the opposite case from the ideal colour proportions for how much each colour occupies in the frame because the quantity of blue colour should be twice larger than of orange because orange is twice as bright as blue. Here there's a lot of orange and little of blue, but in my opinion it gives contrast to image and centres the attention towards it. The green opposite the blue also helps to balance the image. 

Altough colours are certainly appealing in the image, there's another element that kept my attention and this is the frozen position of the bird and how the two characters help to direct the eye towards the bird. At first the guy with the blue shirt is the main attraction but if we follow his eyes we centre our attention in the woman and we startt asking where she is looking at. Then we discover the little bird which is going to take off.

Camera body: Nikon d90

Lens: Nikkor 18-55mm f/3,5-5,6

f/16   1/60 s   ISO 640

Focal length: 20 mm

This is another picture from the same market. I wasn't sure about it because of the lighting. It was midday in a sunny day and one part of the scene was in shadow while the other was under the sun. I opted to measure both parts and set an average exposure in my camera because I did not want to lose the image.

I loved how the colours of the bell peppers and the other vegetables looked under the red umbrella. They were very saturated so I enhanced this saturation in Lightroom adjusting the overall contrast because it's what makes the image so interesting.

 

The green of the vegetables is balanced by the red, orange and yellow of the bell peppers, the yellow bag and the orange umbrella in the background.

Camera body: Nikon d90

Lens: Nikkor 70-300mm f/4,0-5,6

f/16   1/350 s   ISO 640

Focal length: 70 mm

This is the Petr Casino in Karlovy Vary (Czech Rep.) Karlovy Vary is a very beautiful city for photography. Its buildings and fountains are so nice that it's impossible not to take any pictures!

This building caught my attention because of its colours and how the sun lighted them. The brown, red and yellow give a warm sensation to the image. 

I also like the picture because of the combination of shapes in it. We have a triangle at the top, which also contains vertical and horizontal lines, a circle and rectangles. They mix so coherently that they create an interesting image.

Camera body: Nikon d90

Lens: Nikkor 70-300mm f/4,0-5,6

f/8   1/30 s   ISO 1600

Focal length: 70 mm

I've always thought that London Bridge Tower has something very special at sunset and I checked it with this photograph. As soon as the street lamps turned on, I took my camera and started taking pictures. I chose the telephoto lens so I needed a high ISO to shoot because I left my tripod in the hotel. That meant that the image was going to have noise but 1600 is an acceptable number for the Nikon d90. 

The background works well in the image because altought we can see a darker and more saturated cool blue at the top, this blue is getting brighter and warmer as it is next to the bottom, but this change is graduated and helps to balance the picture.