Ian Furniss Photography » Blog Archive

Colour

Colour, it’s something we live with every day of our lives, something that’s all around us, and it’s something that we respond to in many different ways, both consciously and subconsciously. For the most part we ignore it (even photographers) and our reactions to it therefore tend to be subconscious. Many designers for instances will consciously use a specific colour to decorate rooms in order to create a specific effect with the two obvious examples being a blue room that makes the occupant feel cold, an orange or red room that makes them feel warm. In photography we often look towards colour in terms of white balance and we’ll warm or cool down a picture according to the affect we want that image to have on the viewer. Again it’s the same sort of effect, but there is another reason to use colour and that’s its symbolism.

Symbolism is a difficult area to get into because sometimes a colour can mean different things to different people, and even different cultures. Take purple for example. In the UK purple is a colour of nobility and royalty. In clothing the dying process was hard to get right, the things you needed to create the dye were hard to find, and after that, capitalism stepped in and the price meant only nobility could afford to buy and pay for it. Supply & demand. In other countries though, purple is the colour of mourning. For the UK that’s black (let’s not get into the black isn’t a colour argument!). If that wasn’t bad enough, things can get even trickier. Take yellow, a nice soft colour that never really hurt anyone. Tell a soldier he’s yellow and you could find yourself with a black eye since yellow symbolises cowardice. His wife or girlfriend though, she may hang out a yellow ribbon to symbolise hope for his return. One culture, two different meanings. Colour is as tricky a language to use as any other.

So, how do we avoid misunderstandings? Well, one obvious way is to target the colours we use for the cultures we intend our photography to be seen in but that’s not always feasible and sometimes we don’t have that kind of control. The easiest way is to try to stick with using it in the way I mentioned at the beginning, the way we react to it physically or in a subconscious sense.

At this point I want to nudge you in the direction of Mark Metternich. He’s a photographer whose work I adore and admire but, and i’m guessing here since i’ve never spoken to him, he also seems to consider far more than just the image itself. He considers what’s going to happen to it afterwards and in effect, he’s not just creating an image, he’s creating an entire mood to go with it. Take a look at his Limiited Edition Gallery here to see what I mean. Scroll down a bit and is that not stunningly beautiful?!

Despite surely being one of the leading contenders for “Worst Film of The Century”, 300 did have some pleasing imagery in it. Lots of desaturation and tinting to create the comic book feel, lots of red for the bloody special effects. Even those of us who like myself would have rather sat through 2 hours of nails being dragged across a blackboard couldn’t help but feel ‘something’ for the grittiness it evoked.

Now i’m not going to point you in the direction of one of the many Lightroom or Photoshop presets that are out there attempting to recreate ‘the 300 feel’, but what I will do is ask you to consider the theory once in a while in your post-production. Traditionally photography has always had a love for black and white, but what about blue and white or even red and cream? Both can give a completely different feel to an image and bring it to life in a way that black and white doesn’t manage on its own. If that works for you, how about taking it a step further and adding hints of colours on top of your white balance. Lightroom has a wonderful pair of sliders in the develop module (conveniently labelled ‘highlights’ & ‘shadows’) which can add selective colour to either the highlights or shadows thereby dramatically changing the feel of an image. If you don’t have Lightroom, try converting the image to black and white in Photoshop and then using a gradient map. You can of course go over the top with it and create all manner of weird and wonderful styles, that’s a whole different story, but if you want something subtly different then those two sliders are a great place to start. Here are a couple of images I hope show the idea a little better:

This is a shot taken in Belgrade somewhere along the Sava river. The temperature was close to the 100′s from what I recall but although the guy on the boat is wearing shorts, the image does little to convey that. Add some warm hues and a slight sepia effect and it does a lot better.

The next image was taken one foggy morning in Wales at about 7am.

Peace and tranquility, but a very lifeless image that doesn’t really convey it. Add some green and blue and it feels much more relaxed

You’ll need to play around a bit of course and some images won’t work as well as others, but it’s the subtlety within the idea that’s important. If you take a shot of a foundry worker for example, then how about adding some warmth to the highlights with a touch of orange that’ll make the image glow? If it’s a cold winter scene, then a subtle blue in the shadows can cool things down a little more than just straight black and white. It’s one to experiment with and in the end you may prefer the straight black and white but, as the images above show, it can breathe life into something you might otherwise discard. I can certainly testify to the first image above. I have it on my wall at A3 size and at night with the added glow from a single table lamp in the corner it lifts the room nicely.