Second Assignment:
Color Theory
Winter term I took a color photography class from the amazing photographer, Holly Andres. She is amazing at color correction as well as conceptual ideas in photography. The purpose of the class is to only use the manual settings of our cameras taking care to adjust ISO, aperture, and shutter speed as needed for conditions. We could also make slight color corrections in Photoshop, however, Holly wanted us to work on getting the correct exposure through the camera settings. We were also to pay attention to the conceptual idea of the photo and composition. For in class critique we printed out our best six photos on 81/2x11 luster photo paper in the school print lab. Our second assignment was to photograph objects or environments thinking so color theory. For instance, complementary colors, analogous colors, or monochromatic colors. This could be accomplished by either finding these color combinations in your environment or creating scenes or still life. Here are my six best photos that I turned in for critique.
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We had one beautiful, sunny day and so I grabbed my camera and went out to the woods. There is an area out in Trenholm that we used to go mushroom picking in the fall and spring. Old growth timber so thick you had to put your lights on during the day. In the 1990s timber companies came in and stripped the land of all the beautiful trees and reacted the ecosystem. All I have left are my memories.
To help the public feel better about the logging, Oregon has a law that timber companies must replant the trees after they strip the land. Unfortunately this still cause horrendous damage to the land and animals and they only plant douglas fir tress, which is not a normal ecosystem. Plus, have you ever been in a forest where all the trees are the same and you are older than any of them? Very disconcerting.
Driving out to Trenholm on Cannan Road there are several areas to stop at old logging roads. I randomly picked a logging road and pulled up to the steel gate blocking vehicle access. Grabbing my camera and tripod I noticed a beautiful wetland area to my right and then a bunch of garbage back in the woods to my left.
First I walked over to the edge of the forest and found several objects that would indicate the presence of people at some point. There was a Coors Lite beer can stuck to one of the tree limbs, socks, mens underwear, chip bags, and other items thrown about in the mud and bushes. I also found a plastic shopping bag full of cut up fruit and vegetables thrown out on the forest floor. Like someone had thrown it down in haste. Was someone trying to bait a bear? You can see the photo of the bag in a later assignment called narrative.
All photos taken on manual settings with a Nikon D60 DSLR.
Image of wet, dirty mens underwear and a near by soggy, orange business card of a man from Rainer, OR. The image fits the criteria of the assignment because of it's use of complementary colors.
A few feet away from the mens underwear were two grey mens socks with red bands sticking out of the mud. I photographed from an angle close to the ground to suggest a person laying on the ground and perhaps just waking up in this forest area after partying or maybe something else...
We make a change in the image sequence to the wetland area 100 feet from all the trash. No garbage in sight. The sun just happened to be peaking through the clouds and created amazing color. An example of monochromatic color. I stopped taking photos as this site because of hearing something growling at me from the forest.
This image was taken of the moss that lives on the old apple tree that recently cracked in three pieces and fell over. See a previous post called Old Apple Tree for more info.
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