Colour Work Diary

Mind Map-

Evaluation of mind map-

To create this mind-map i firstly thought of objects or things that were saturated colour like flowers, trees, a rainbow, these of which are all natural things that you would find outside, so when you take photos of things outside you have natural light which will add to how saturated and bright the colour appears. Then i thought about the opposite of saturated colours, muted colours, so then i started mapping objects that were normally quite dull in colour. For example buildings, clouds, water in dull lighting and dying flowers. After i had created the mind map, i used it as inspirations for ideas of what to take photos of.

Evaluation of how I recorded the photos-

To record my set of 22 photos of colour, i used my Nikon d3300 with a standard 18-55mm lens attached to it. The camera setting that i would normal use is the landscape one and i would normally use manual focus, as i find that easier to get better quality photos when i have time, if i don't have time i just use auto-focus. The majority of the photos were taken at Harlow college with the exception of 6, 5 of them i took whilst in New York earlier this year and i used them muted colours as they are of buildings. And the other 1 was also muted but with a mixture of saturated in it, its a photo of hills and the sea as it was taken in the Caribbean also earlier this year. For the rest of the photos that i took in college it was mostly of flowers and other random objects like mannequins.

Some good photos-

1.

I chose this photo to represent colour because i think all of the different colours look good as they are very vibrant and saturated. As the photo is of seeds in a bush the colours are all natural which makes them very eye catching because they are orange and it stands out from the dark green colour of the leaves. Also in the photo the orange seeds at the front stand out because they are the only thing that in focus and the rest of the photo is in a slight blur, this gives a good effect as it lets the seed be the centre of attention. The bad thing about this photo is from the angle that it was taken at doesn't show as much of the colour as there actually was in the bush because if i had taken the photo from above then it would've shown more of the could because behind theres more clumps of orange so then the photo would have been more full of colour. so to improve this photo i would re-take it from a better angle to maximise the amount if colour shown.

2.

I took this photo in college as i though that this photo was good for colour as theres obviously quite a range of colours in it and its quite a different photo compared to my other photos because its a mad made thing that has been purposefully made to be colourful, whereas my others photos are of naturally colourful things. This photo has quite a long shot of view as it shows the blocks descending in colour and towards the end they look smaller a its quite a long corridor, i like this descending effect as it adds something to think about because the lights are descending in a line too and they look level to each of the blocks. the downside to this photo is you can't fully see each of the blocks as the blocks in front appear to be bigger because of the angle it was taken from also the front of the photo is slightly blurry. The photo would look better if you could se al of the blocks as it would showcase their colour better. To improve this photo i would crop the right side of the photo up to where the lights are so that the photo is more focused on the blocks, and i would sue levels to change the brightness and contrast in the photo, as it would look better if it was a bit darker in certain buts and then the lights look really bright.

Photos that need improving-

1.

I think that this photo needs some improvement as its slightly out of frame and you can't see all of the flower. The reason its like this is because i was quite zoomed in and up close to it so that i could capture the detail. I like how its mainly focused on the pink flower in the middle because of the zoom and it also cuts out the background and leaves little negative space which is good, because a lot of the frame is filled up so theres nothing in the background to draw your attention away from the flower. On the other hand i think it would be good if all of the flower was shown or attest it was cropped out in a better way that looks equal. Also some of the photo has slight blur in it, so it would look better if it was sharpened in those areas. To improve the photo i would either re-take it and try and capture of the flower in the frame, or i would edit it on photoshop but sharpening the blurry areas and by increasing the contrast a little bit so that the colour of the flowers stood out a bit more, as that is the whole point of the photo.

2.

This is another one of my photos that i think could be improved, firstly the photo is from too much of a long shot and it would've looked better if the photo was taken closer to the subject of the photo which was the mannequins. I decided to take a photo of the mannequins because i thought that they were a good representation of colour, but it was hard to get to them so i tried to photograph them anyway. Also they are in really dim lighting so they don't look as colourful as they actually are and because of the flash that i had to use its cause a reflection of of them and the photo is slightly blurry too. The photo would've looked better if they were close and if i could have arranged them a certain way, like decreasing in brightness of colour. To improve the photo i would jus re-take it or i would crop the photo so that you can just see the mannequins and i would use levels or curves to dry and balance to lighting in the photo.

Photoshopped photos-

1.

                                                     

.

This is my first edited photo of my colour set of photos, i wanted to edit this photo as i thought that the cooer in the flower needed to brought out a bit more so that it was more eye-catching and stood out more. In the original photo there is a slight blur all around the flower and there a bit of mist at the bottom of the photo too, so i wanted to decrease how visible that was. I edited this photo using photo shop, for this photo i only edited it a little bit just so that it would look a little bit better than the original as i didn't want to change it too much as i thought it was already a good photo. Firstly i used brightness and contrast and i just slightly lowered the brightness then i increased the contrast by a round 20, after that i just used levels to finish it off. The good thing about this edit is that now the flower stands out much more and the colour is more saturated and vibrant but darker because of the contrast. The downside to the edit is its still blurry around the edges of the photo, but i ddi make it less visible because of the darkness of the photo from the contrast. To further improve the photo i would crop out the rest of the photo around the flower, or i would do a colour splash.

2.

For the original of this photo i dint really know how to edit it as it was quite hard to do anything with it, for example i tried numerous filter on the photo but none of them looked good. The photo didn't really need to be cropped or have any little touches done to it, like increase the brightness or contrast. and as i had chose this photo to represent muted colours its not lie i could try and make the colours look more vibrant because there as none. So as the colours were already muted i decided to turn the photo into black and white, that then originally captured the different levels of the billing and all of the details in the, but i thought that it was too boring and nothing was happening so i extruded it as i thought that would make the photo look betters then there was something going on. Once i had extruded it i had to try and get the right amount of blocks and how much the depth was, i did my blocks at around 15 and the depth at 20 as i didn't want it to be too dramatic. The good thing about this edit is that it looks really different to the original photo and its quite creative, also i like how the main building in the middle is the only one that you can still see properly. The downside to this edit is because of the black and white it made the photo quite dark and so you can't really see the building anymore. To improve this edit i would brighten the photo so that you can see the buildings better.

3.

This is the last edited photo from colour, this photo took quite long to edit as i didn't really know what to do with i. Originally i just wanted to improve the photo and make the blur less visible on the right side and increase the saturation of the colours as they were quite dull. I got an idea to do colour splash as all of the photo had colour in it and not just sections of the photo so i thought that it would be good as i could get quite a lot of sections for it. After trying colour splash it didn't really look good so then i decided to the the colour and black and white in sections one after another. To this i had to have two copts of the photo and have one in black and white then one in colour so that i could grab sections of the coloured one and insert them into the black and white image. I did this two times, one withe the sections going vertical then one with sections going horizontal. The good thing about this edit is that its really relevant to the theme of colour as have of the photo s muted and the other half is in full colour. The downside to the edit is that you can't really see the black and white sections as the coloured sections are quite eye-catching. To further improve this edit i would make the black and white sections more outstanding by using levels to make them brighter and increase their contrast.