Today I planted the idea of YELLOW in my mind and went out and looked for things to photograph on campus that were yellow. It turns out that there are lots of yellow things to photograph that are yellow. It must be one of the most common colors in the universe!
Not really… It is just that what I think about affects what I see. Pointing the camera at something yellow by itself doesn’t make for a very interesting photograph. I have to see it as line and shape first and pay attention to the light and texture. An image forms from its design elements and principles.
Next, I realize that the background tone effects how bright the color is perceived. Against a dark background it pops. Against a bright background it pales. Seems to me it is just like mixing white paint to create tints and mixing black paint to color for shades. The same is true for light direction. Pointing towards the sun makes the colors wash out and point away from the sun makes it more vibrant and saturated.
As I wandered and photographed I kept thinking about the controls I have over the most mundane images. I can control depth of field, focal length, and framing. With framing I can look at the relationship of elements in the image.
I stopped and photograph some dandelions and I noticed a little honey bee at work harvesting pollen. I tried to get closer and closer until the bee flew away. I felt bad about disturbing it but also realized how fleeting every moment is and that a photograph is always about a moment in time. As I walked back to the photo building on campus I noticed shadows of swallows on the concrete. I think it would be great to get the outlines of bird shadows on the concrete but they were too high and the shadow was too soft. I will keep my eye out for them another day.
When I got back to the building I noticed some grasses and their shadows on the stone bricks. The color of the mortar was similar to the yellowish gold color of the grass. I enjoyed trying to capture these as the wind blew the grass.
I think some of my favorite images were made as abstracts of existing artwork. Yellow is one of the primary colors of paintings so it is found in murals and posters all the time. The challenge is not to reproduce the artwork of others but to interpret the work into abstract images of my own. Again I am thinking of shapes and lines.
As the clock got closer to 9:30 I had to turn off my brain and return to the normal world that is largely blind to composition. Being creative requires the ability to turn on the minds eye and then turn it back off to get the rest of the process of critiquing and publishing done.
