Weekly challenge 3/23 - 3/29 In Living Color

SquarePeg

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For this week's challenge, let's concentrate on color. Look for or create color harmonies for your photos. If you can, please add some comments on the colors and what attracted you to take or create the shot. Please post new photos only. Get out there and shoot!

Some links that might be helpful:

Basic Color Theory

https://petapixel.com/2017/01/27/comprehensive-color-theory-guide-photographers/

The Ultimate Guide for Color Theory for Photography: Photo Editing and Shooting Tips

For the color adventurers (realists need not click here):
https://petapixel.com/2018/06/09/creative-applications-of-color-theory-in-landscape-photography/
 
Ok, three different natural color themes in three different posts. This one is blue:

20190322181510_IMG_4823-01-01-730x410.jpeg
 
The greens & yellows combine well enough with the greys & silvers but the woman in pink makes this shot for me:

shadows and tall trees - 1.jpg
 
For this week's challenge, let's concentrate on color. Look for or create color harmonies for your photos. If you can, please add some comments on the colors and what attracted you to take or create the shot. Please post new photos only. Get out there and shoot!

Some links that might be helpful:

Basic Color Theory

https://petapixel.com/2017/01/27/comprehensive-color-theory-guide-photographers/

The Ultimate Guide for Color Theory for Photography: Photo Editing and Shooting Tips

For the color adventurers (realists need not click here):
https://petapixel.com/2018/06/09/creative-applications-of-color-theory-in-landscape-photography/
Sharon, thank you for the links about color theory. Very interesting information.
 
Reading the linked info and watching a video at one of the links Sharon provided, I chose a greenish yellow to be the base colour of the image to be edited for the challenge. I used Lightroom's Hue sliders to shift greens toward yellow, oranges away from yellow, and reds leftward. I couldn't tell toward what or away from what red was being shifted by the colours on the slider but it made the brown bushes in the image move toward purple. Purple would be one of the complementary colours to my base. Blue is also complementary. Both are on the opposite side of the color wheel from my base colour.

In Photoshop I generally do most of my editing in the LAB color space, using curves of the A and B channels to create more colour separation and contrast. I also used the B channel to create masks so that I could selectively boost yellow and then blue for greater contrast.

All this created a more homogenous colour scheme than that with which I generally work. I'm not sure that the image I chose for the challenge is the best example but since there was a predominant base colour as taught in the video by Dave Morrow, I went with this one. I think the attempt at creating colour harmony allowed me to accentuate hues in a way that helps the eye move through frame more easily, without distractions from hues that aren't related.


bridge at the Japanese garden


Here is a screenshot of the Kuler extension I used to see what it'd show for complementary colours. My old Ps CS4 uses the Kuler extension. More modern versions have Adobe Color Themes.

47400004102_29fcfdf769_z.jpg


Here is the relatively unedited image. Sliders were used to bring the histogram to the right so the darks weren't blocked but no colour editing had been done. You'll see I also edited out some distracting branches in the final version.

33576917018_112c0d3fd5.jpg


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The greens & yellows combine well enough with the greys & silvers but the woman in pink makes this shot for me:

View attachment 170567
Fred, had you edited this to get that reduced colour palette?

John, here is a thumbnail of the original shot still in the phone:

shadows and tall trees original - 1 (1).jpg


As you can see it came out with a heavy green cast. Using the standard software on my computer, I corrected the WB and then adjusted the lighting and reduced the saturation slightly. I also ran it through the auto curves button. I liked what I had at this point so didn't use the individual colour adjustment sliders. To my eye, the result has a sort of cheap grocery-store film look - perhaps Agfa Vista or something of that ilk.
 
A part of the dishes from last night, the "cold" colors of the aluminum go harmoniously with the "warm" colors of the soup cups and (brown) meat plate in the background. The aluminum bowl and soup cups were crooked and I left it that way, because it fits perfectly into the total composition. The lighting is a small halogen spot in the ceiling and some diffuse daylight from my right, the mix of day/artificial light makes the atmosphere in this image. The reflections in the bowl come from plates, glasses etc., indeed, the rest of our dished to wash.
Fuji XE1 + 18-55mm - ISO 800 - handheld
View attachment 170593
 
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The greens & yellows combine well enough with the greys & silvers but the woman in pink makes this shot for me:

View attachment 170567
Fred, had you edited this to get that reduced colour palette?

John, here is a thumbnail of the original shot still in the phone:

View attachment 170588


As you can see it came out with a heavy green cast. Using the standard software on my computer, I corrected the WB and then adjusted the lighting and reduced the saturation slightly. I also ran it through the auto curves button. I liked what I had at this point so didn't use the individual colour adjustment sliders. To my eye, the result has a sort of cheap grocery-store film look - perhaps Agfa Vista or something of that ilk.
Nice work!
 
A part of the dishes from last night, the "cold" colors of the aluminum go harmoniously with the "warm" colors of the soup cups and (brown) meat plate in the background. The aluminum bowl and soup cups were crooked and I left it that way, because it fits perfectly into the total composition. The lighting is a small halogen spot in the ceiling and some diffuse daylight from my right, the mix of day/artificial light makes the atmosphere in this image. The reflections in the bowl come from plates, glasses etc., indeed, the rest of our dished to wash.
Fuji XE1 + 18-55mm - ISO 800 - handheld
View attachment 170593
gk, your limited colour palette is superb, especially since the two main colours are from opposite warmth sides of the colour wheel.
 
Simplicity
Can't resist showing this, a combination of halogen light and diffused daylight, the yellow and red hues are slightly turned on with a bit of the blue hue in the handle. Natural colors? Hardly, but that wasn't my intention, by the way, what is 'natural color' :icon_rolleyes: For me the simplicity of the composition is what counts, after so many years I still very much like that mix of different ° Kelvin.
Fuji XE1 + 18 / 55mm - ISO 800 - handheld
View attachment 170599
That blue against the gold is tremendous.
 
I too worked on an image with an already limited colour palette and it was very nice to see that others had similar ideas when I came back here to post what I'd done.
First up is the version that hadn't had any editing done on the hues, followed by the finished image.

40493636763_a159dd8f12_b.jpg



looking south through the storm


The unedited version of this seemed to show essentially grey clouds but when analyzed, the A channel of the LAB color space was neutral but the B channel showed shades of blue.
When analyzing the sunlit area next to the volcano, that colour was a red with more magenta than yellow. Other than white and black, blue and red are the only other colours in this image.

After using curves in LAB mode to create separation of color and boosting colour, I used the Ps color picker to choose the blue of the clouds and painted more of that colour back into the image selectively. I did the same for the red near that volcano, and also painted some of that colour up into the clouds for more balance and contrast in the composition.
Below are screenshots showing the colours picked.

46544441455_fec38eb007_b.jpg

Blue was picked and a separate layer was filled with it. A luminosity mask was used to constrain the colour to darks.

32517893157_a83a278811_b.jpg

The red (I called it salmon) was also picked and used to boost the colour adjacent next to the volcano and also to carry that hue into the sky, into the clouds above the mountain and also up high in frame.

The blue and red, from opposing warmth sides of the color wheel, illustrate complementary colour harmony.

.
 
A few lonely Irises have appeared, and I didn't have anything to do, so a quick set up in studio for "Royal Purple". In keeping with the Color Harmony theme of the thread I chose a Triad Scheme (3 hues equally spaced around the color wheel). In this case Purple was the primary or dominant hue, with Green and Orange hues filling the other two spots. I didn't feel like setting up everything for a white line shot of the glass vase, so I tried something a little different. I went with a large Softbox high left and behind the arrangement feathering the tops of the flowers, pointed to just right of the camera. On camera right was a white reflector to bounce light back into the shadows, and a flag camera left blocked the light from flaring.
Royal Purple by William Raber, on Flickr
 
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