Assignment 3: 'Colour'

Enough of drafts - let me do this for real!

Assignment 3: Colour

“I feel that colour photographs and black-and-white photographs are  essentially two different media. I approach them differently. I see them differently, and my goals are different in each.”(Bruce Barnbaum: ‘The Art of Photography’ 2010)

“I feel that for a colour photograph to be successful, colour itself must be a central element. There must be something compelling about the colours, about the relationships among the colours, about the intensities of the colours, and about their placement within the scene that makes them essential to the photograph’. (Ibid)

I guess I have been running a long time, with camera in hand and just chasing down assignment-related images to photograph. This is the first time I have properly slowed down enough to actually select a book, open it at a relevant page and begin reading.

Speaking of books, I went on a ‘book binge’ when I first began this course. But on second glance, I find that most of them are in the ‘how to’ category, while only a very few are of the ‘why’ variety. The above-quoted volume, ‘The Art of Photography’, seems to straddle both strands of writing about this subject.But the stopping and reading must go further and deeper… The OCA student website is obviously a storehouse of highly relevant material. Add to the mix the photography forum and photography students’ blogs and the scope for learning and being informed is simply vast.

This third Assignment has really made me think about colour in a new way. I now see colour relationships that I was previously only subconsciously aware of in my pre-OCA life. Combining this heighten awareness with the elements I learned in the first two assignments has enabled me to appreciate colour harmonies in a completely new way. As Barnbaum says: “That’s an achievement, and it shows you have the eye to notice such things and bring them to the fore”(Ibid).

Even whilst writing this, I am seeing colours as if for the first time. I just went into the kitchen to fix a coffee and noticed a clematys plant basking in the crisp winter sunlight. But the new colour consciousness took me deeper and it was the relationship, the harmony, between the violet flowers and the green foliage that was really apparent.

It has been quite challenging having to think in terms of colour in such a technical way. Stopping to consider the ‘colour wheel’ and being tuned-in as to what is involved has been keenly demanding. The various exercises have helped, but I feel I need to re-visit these on a regular basis in order to really take on board what is being learned. I suppose this is one of the difficulties of distance learning: who checks whether new knowledge is being absorbed or not?

And as for reading and studying, as aside from making photographs, an avoidance of this has been a life-pattern of mine since my teenage years. With my colleague and learning mentor Tracey, I am in the process of trying to analyse and break out of this debilitating way of responding to new enthusiasms and challenges. We are currently working through a seven-step process that simply, but profoundly, asks ‘why’ to each consecutive response. The fact that I am finally writing these words is testament to her tenacity and determination in her role as mentor.

Thanks are also due to fellow photography student Vicki, who kindly and sensibly responded to my recent rages, on our OCA forum, about my lack of ability with the Apple Aperture programme. Just when I thought I had lost all my images, for the second time in a week, she very calmly and helpfully sent me her copy of the Aperture-users’ manual. Thank you Vicki – I feel more empowered already!

And finally thanks must go to the OCA for checking me out, as I had not sent in any work since 7.2.12. Yes there has been sporadic experiments with Assignment 3 and colour, but the time gap has been far to wide… I shall be taking up their offer to contact one of their advisors and exploring better ways to study.