Color

This week, my assignment for my photo class was based on color. We were to photograph a series of 4 images with a cast of Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow. We could use gels over the flash or lens, or we could set an in-camera custom white balance, as to "trick" it to photograph in various casts. No post-processing was allowed (of course, one could achieve very easily similar results in Photoshop, but that defeats the purpose of the assignment).

As usual, I had way too much going on during the week and didn't have the time to buy gels and filters for my lens, so I went for what I thought was easiest, but also most insightful: customizing the white balance in the camera. Here's how it works: If you point the camera to a pure Blue and you tell it that it's pure White, your image will end up having a Yellow cast, or the equivalent effect of putting a Yellow gel in front of the lens.

It sounds confusing but it's pretty easy when you think about the RGB (red, green, blue) color wheel. To achieve a particular overall color, you have to set the custom white balance to the color resulting from the combination of the other two colors in the color wheel:

To get Red --> set to Cyan (= Green + Blue)

To get Green --> set to Magenta (= Blue + Red)

To get Blue --> set to Yellow (= Green + Red)

To get Yellow (= Green + Red) --> set to Blue

Before going out to photograph, I took an image of pure Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Blue, achieved directly in Photoshop by controlling the R-G-B values. I essentially filled my frame with the color displayed on my screen and took a picture. Throughout the shoot, I used those four images to set my custom white balance on the fly. This worked out really well, because I was able to take the four images of desired colors pretty quickly; less than a minute in total, including the time required to manipulate my camera settings and re-set the white balance.

Below is what I'm submitting this week. I saw the girl at Pike Place market; liked her style and the gorgeous red truck she was sitting in front of, and thought it was the perfect composition for a color assignment. I had to work pretty fast, so that she didn't see me and realize that I was photographing her, despite the fact that I was right in front of her. Unbelievably, she didn't realize! I've learnt that the best way to do street photography is to wear clothes that blend in as much as possible, look and act pretty anonymously and hang out in crowded places (ideally, where there are lots of tourists, so people are used to seeing cameras). Also, I try to look distracted and point my camera in various directions, without actually shooting. As part of this shoot, I ended up photographing a cop and a guy on a balcony, using the same technique...they didn't realize they were my subjects either :-)

Milkana

Blue:

Green:


Yellow:


Red: