Re: Re: Lesson 5: Organizing color: Color & Color Theory

#19593
Duncan Rawlinson
Keymaster

Beautiful work on this assignment.

Again, this assignment was a technical assignment that was meant to allow you to showcase your understanding of both color control and theory. We wanted you to work with a simplified color palette while at the same time carrying forward the rules of composition discussed in previous lessons.

You’ve done a great job of that, as your image not only has a strong, vibrant color palette of yellows and blues, but it also abides by the rule of thirds and ha a strong sense of depth and texture. It sounds funny to talk about the design of a plate of fish and chips but this design concept can be carried forward to more complicated and emotionally rich environment. When you’re starting out as a photographer it’s important to learn the “mathematics” of the deign.

These thing are often technical but they have creative elements to them as well. So while audience’s may simply emotionally react to your image’s composition, the fact is that they are drawn towards the framing, depth, texture, color simplicity and so on. In the end, these are technical decisions with creative consequences.

Generally speaking, most of the creativity in photography will come through your visual story telling abilities. Once the technical elements come to you naturally and you can start to quickly identify strong, naturally occurring compositions, you’ll begin to experiment with “mood” and “story”.

However, what you’ve done with this photograph is great. It shows that you have an eye for composing images that have a strong technical foundation.

– Your color palette is a mix of blues and yellows.

– You have a strong sense of depth with the fish in the foreground and the plate and fries in the background.

– You’ve balanced your colors in a way that the composition is primarily “warm” with a small “cool” highlight (i.e. the blue of the plate).

– The lemon acts as a “stopper” giving the audience something to look at while they are not exploring the rest of the image.

– Your fries and fish act as sort of a “leading line” drawing your audience’s eyes into the composition.

Once again, great work on this assignment!