Dogwood's theme this week has been:
WEEK 2 | Composition: Color Harmony | Get out your color wheel. Do opposites attract? Can there be harmony with opposite colors? Does the Hulk wear purple pants? Mix warm and cool colors. |
Ironically, I bought Jake Hicks' Coloured Gel Portraits & Retouching Photography Tuition back in December and haven't had the chance to look at it yet, so I will be expanding on use of gels throughout the year and can't wait to get stuck in!
Back to this shoot, I was sat on a stool and used my foot to press the remote shutter release on the floor. I whacked the aperture right up to F14 as there was no point in shooting any wider than that for beauty with no background on show and I wanted to ensure a sharp image.
Used my Nikon D300 with 85mm (so more like 120mm as cropped sensor) as the D800 has now died a slow drawn-out death and refuses to focus (I think a mirror replacement is needed and a few other bits)
I decided to use red and turquoise gels as I only have 3 gels total.. (the other is purple) and I found these to be the most opposing colours on the colour wheel; they definitely work in harmony with each other, clashing with pink lips & nails.
A minor problem I encountered was when the red overlapped the turquoise too much, it looked black so I tried to arrange them with as little overlapping as possible. The finished image was cropped slightly too, although not much as I know the D300 doesn't have a huge sensor unlike some of the newer DSLRs.
After I'd taken this, I read something quite interesting about what colour harmony actually means.
"A color harmony is three colors spaced evenly on the color wheel, for example: red, yellow, and blue. They add interest to a composition but are seen to harmonize.
Complementary colors on the other hand are opposites on the color wheel, for example: red and green. When you pair complementary colors you have high contrast, not harmony."
So basically that two colours do not make 'colour harmony,' only 3+ ..interesting and not something I'd considered before. I am actually after a bright yellow gel, something for which I went to SWPP in London in the first place but came out with a camera instead. I guess the skin could be considered in the colour palette, which is quite warm with yellow tones.
I like the way the red gel curls round at the bottom making a line of highlight.. your thoughts welcome as ever.
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