Exercise 24. Control the strength of colour

The first exercise in part three: Colour. 

The requirement is to find a strong, definite colour, select a viewpoint and fill the viewfinder with the colour.  

The objective of this exercise was to alter the brilliance of a colour by making adjustments to the exposure by changing the aperture and using the camera in manual mode. 

As the colour Orange is associated with sunshine and joy and a strong colour, I  chose to photograph the fruit.  The colour orange is named after the appearance of the ripe orange fruit.  Orange is used to evoke strong responses, physically and emotionally. 

Orange is a tertiary colour and a complimentary colour of both primary colours red and yellow. It inherits the characteristics of both colours, but with less intensity.

The six images below were taken outdoors, using the natural sunlight.  

My images are directly from the camera, with no processing carried out on them.
The HSB readings were gathered from axis xy 20 14

Nikon D7000

Tripod

105 lens

Camera setting Manual 

Picture control mode - vivid

  Fig 1.  -  1 stop     HSB  colour   H 23   S 99   B 85

1/125sec    f/11.0    105 mm   ISO 100 

Opening the aperture by one more stop, alters the colour, making it the brightest image of the exercise, but the strength of the orange colour has been lost and veers towards the colour yellow. This image now demonstrates tint and not pure hue. In saturation terms this appears to be 'weak'.

Fig 2.   - 1 stop   HSB colour   H 19  S 78  B 74

1/125sec    f/13.0   105 mm    ISO 100 

Opening the aperture by one stop, has allowed in more light, thereby rendering the image over exposed.  The depth of the colour has been lightened and is giving the image a washed 
out appearance. 

Metered Exposure.  Fig 3   HSB colour   H 24  S 78   B 78 

1/125 sec    f/14.0    105 mm   ISO 100

Fig 4.  + 1 stop   HSB colour  H 22  S95   B  62

1/125sec    f/16.0     105 mm     ISO 100

This image is underexposed by one stop, and the colour of the fruit has taken on more depth of colour. Judging its saturation, I consider that on the scale from pure to unsaturated, this would register 'intense'.

Fig 5.  + 1 stop   HSB colour  H 17   S 100   B50

1/125sec   f/18.0    105 mm    ISO 100

Underexposed by a further stop, this image is much darker and richer in colour, becoming quite close to the colour of the sunset, red being more prominent in this photograph. In terms of saturation this I feel would register 'pure'

My thoughts on this exercise

• We are able to control the strength of colour by making alterations to the exposure. 
• Deep underexposed images can appear stronger, overexposed would appear weak or 'over bright' as in fig.3.  This is veering on the side of yellow.  
• I  see that other students show the HSB levels for these images, I am going to look into this as this is new to me and see if I can alter this in preferences or whether I am happier with RGB. 
• In vivid mode, the camera increases the colour saturation, contrast and sharpening.
• Learnt how to read technical information of photograph, with photoshop elements 8.  This gave me the HSB information for each image, and was therefore able to compare with technical colour information of the colour orange - H 30  S 100  B 100, I took the readings and information from the Axis -  x 20    y14 the same axis for each photograph.