At last I've returned to my course, unfortunately at this time of year the garden takes precedence. Part three of the course is Colour, simple I thought, colour is everywhere. As recommended in the introduction to this section I read Basic Colour theory on the OCA website. Johannes Itten wrote that colours have a mystical capacity for spritual expression without being tied to objects so colour can be made the subject of a picture. I don't pretend to understand all he is saying, however I now look at colours in a different way. Hopefully my photographs will show that I have a better grasp of what he means.
This is Mr Abdull, he has a fabric stall on Birmingham's outdoor market, a part of what is known as the Bullring Rag market. The colours of all the different materials were amazing, they were not in the proportions suggested by Johannes Itten but were more a kaleidoscope of every colour imaginable he looks very proud as he stands in front of his wares, his measuring stick at the ready.
The stallholders at the Rag market were all very friendly and didn't seem to mind me taking their picture. Unfortunately I failed to ask most of them their names, something I must remember to do in future. The flower seller above, caught my attention. She was sheltering from the wind behind a home made wind break of cardboard boxes, I love the green hat with pink ear muffs, the following photograph taken from the back shows it better along with some of her flowers.
Alongside the fabric stalls there are a large number selling very colourful fruit and veg, all carefully displayed like the one above. When I have time I will post more of the photographs taken on my visit to the market.
When starting this part of the course I looked around for colour, without giving it too much thought. Nor did I do any research, a big mistake. I believed that colour was an easy subject, after all colour is everywhere isn't it! Before any of the above photographs were taken I noticed some fields of Oil Seed Rape, it was in full bloom and looked very yellow, or so I thought. Depending on the light the rapeseed had a greenish cast, I used a polarising filter which helped to correct this. Below are some of the pictures taken.
Once I had taken (in my opinion) a good photograph of these amazing yellow fields, I looked for other colours but soon realized that the landscape was dominated by one colour. Buttercups & dandelions covered any uncultivated land, so I photographed these as well. Yellow certainly took centre stage at this time of Year.
It was at this stage that I re-read the course book, in particular the exercise Primary and secondary colours and realized that I should have varied the exposure for each colour, ah well, start again.
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