Colour

[sousa]

Please see below my “Simplified Colour” photo for your comments.

[Duncan Rawlinson]

Hello again and thank you for submitting this assignment.

You’ve done a great job of accomplishing the technical components of this assignment. We asked you to find a location with a simplified color palette and design your composition in a way that is visually interesting.

I would like to draw a comparison between your previous photograph (of the church) and this one. My concern with this photograph is that you don’t fully exploit the potential of the environment. In your last photograph with the church you really took advantage of the environment. You had great framing, simplified colors, interesting shapes, informal balance and even a sense of story. However, this photograph, besides it’s simplified color palette, doesn’t communicate the same strong sense of emotion or design.

Similarly, I don’t feel you’ve taken full advantage of the environment. Let’s look at one example. Look at the beautiful red rock in your foreground. It’s full of texture, contrast and gradients of color. However, in order fully exploit this sense of texture you need to work with a more complimentary lighting angle. In your photograph the sun is located overhead. You can always tell where the sun is located based on how the shadows fall in your composition.

In this composition the sun should provide side lighting which would help you bring out the beautiful textures in the rock. The rock takes up 2/3rds of your composition so you need to do everything possible to ensure you make it the most interesting visual object that you can possible make it.

Let’s use an obvious example to help make this point. Look at the following photograph.

http://flemmingbo.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/sandfb1.jpg

Notice how the shadows fall on the landscape? You can tell that the sun is setting and is located towards the horizon on the right side of the frame (you can tell by were the shadows fall). This side lighting has created shadows in the sand which has exaggerated their sense of pattern. Look at the lines in the sand on the bottom right side of the shot. Now imagine that the sun was directly overhead. All of those lines would be lost and the photograph wouldn’t have been able to fully exploit the texture and pattern of the sand. It would be a totally different (and much less interesting) photograph if the photographer shot this scene using overhead light.

What you’ve done isn’t wrong, I just think it could be stronger. Making your photographs go from “good” to “great” means you need to focus on technical, story telling, creative and environmental factors to ensure you get the strongest possible composition.

You’re on the right track. I just want to ensure you’re always focusing on the smaller details! Keep up the great work.

[Author]

Posts