"If in doubt, add twenty more colours" (Kaffe Fassett)
This week's assignment on my photography course was to focus on colour. Pig in clover / francophile in Paris / fudgeophile in Penrith Fudge Shop / academic in fabulous library / gardener at Royal Horticultural Society / and, of course, knitter in Kaffe Fassett pattern (although I'm not a knitter. But then, neither am I a pig, I like to think, except occasionally around fudge).
I've had macro extension tubes for my camera (the cheap skate way of being able to do close-ups) for ages, but rarely use them. Mine only work if I have the lens on manual focus and I find it very difficult to get the part of the picture I want in focus, since you get a very small depth of field and most things aren't flat (note to self - experiment with aperture priority and macros - have a feeling this doesn't work, but investigate properly). So I thought I'd try using the macro tubes to photograph colours, since close ups are an easy way of making a photograph focused on the colour.
Here's the trousers I am wearing today:
I like the way you can see the texture of the cotton, as well as the smudged print of the pattern (Anokhi - hand printed, and it shows. I know, I'm such an old hippy).
Here's my enormous pinkish-red sun hat, rendered absolutely humongous at this scale:
I think I like the way it goes out of focus at the edges. The versions of this where I had a flat bit of hat, so more consistent focus, didn't work as well. As a picture, I think it's a bit dull though.
The colours of this bit of a feather duster makes me feel mildly nauseous. But I'm pleased with the effect of the fibres and the sense of movement up to the right hand corner.
The total effect of the whole duster, which adds mint green and pale yellow to the mix, is entirely disgusting. I don't know why I give it house room. Well, it's not mine, and the children love using it.
From my least favourite colours to some of my favourites:
The course is as much about digital manipulation of images as about composition. You can do such fabulous things with digital processing so I really wanted to learn about this. But I'm finding it rather frustrating and discouraging. It's extraordinarily time consuming, and I am already frustrated at having so little time to do this. And prolonged mouse and keyboard work makes my arms and hands hurt, and I'm finding the package they're teaching us (Adobe Photoshop Elements) very unintuitive and clunky. I'd love to play around with my images, but it's just too time consuming, physically painful and winds me up too much to be worth it. It's like having this amazing sweetshop of delicious fudges, but not being able to reach them. Which is a long introduction to say - but I did use one of my newly learned skills on this one, to tweak the colours so everything was a little more intense and the purples especially so.
And finally, not with a macro tube, since you couldn't see enough of the fabulous Kaffe Fassett-esque colours:
The wonderful hat that artremis knitted me. How beautiful is that?!
I've had macro extension tubes for my camera (the cheap skate way of being able to do close-ups) for ages, but rarely use them. Mine only work if I have the lens on manual focus and I find it very difficult to get the part of the picture I want in focus, since you get a very small depth of field and most things aren't flat (note to self - experiment with aperture priority and macros - have a feeling this doesn't work, but investigate properly). So I thought I'd try using the macro tubes to photograph colours, since close ups are an easy way of making a photograph focused on the colour.
Here's the trousers I am wearing today:
I like the way you can see the texture of the cotton, as well as the smudged print of the pattern (Anokhi - hand printed, and it shows. I know, I'm such an old hippy).
Here's my enormous pinkish-red sun hat, rendered absolutely humongous at this scale:
I think I like the way it goes out of focus at the edges. The versions of this where I had a flat bit of hat, so more consistent focus, didn't work as well. As a picture, I think it's a bit dull though.
The colours of this bit of a feather duster makes me feel mildly nauseous. But I'm pleased with the effect of the fibres and the sense of movement up to the right hand corner.
The total effect of the whole duster, which adds mint green and pale yellow to the mix, is entirely disgusting. I don't know why I give it house room. Well, it's not mine, and the children love using it.
From my least favourite colours to some of my favourites:
The course is as much about digital manipulation of images as about composition. You can do such fabulous things with digital processing so I really wanted to learn about this. But I'm finding it rather frustrating and discouraging. It's extraordinarily time consuming, and I am already frustrated at having so little time to do this. And prolonged mouse and keyboard work makes my arms and hands hurt, and I'm finding the package they're teaching us (Adobe Photoshop Elements) very unintuitive and clunky. I'd love to play around with my images, but it's just too time consuming, physically painful and winds me up too much to be worth it. It's like having this amazing sweetshop of delicious fudges, but not being able to reach them. Which is a long introduction to say - but I did use one of my newly learned skills on this one, to tweak the colours so everything was a little more intense and the purples especially so.
And finally, not with a macro tube, since you couldn't see enough of the fabulous Kaffe Fassett-esque colours:
The wonderful hat that artremis knitted me. How beautiful is that?!