Colours have always been an issue for me. I well remember being in Kindergarten and being the only kid that didn’t know his colours. I was upset and didn’t understand why I had so much trouble with them, I kind of bluffed my way along until a visit to the Opticians when I was about 9 or 10 years old and it was discovered I was colour blind.
Since then I have always used that as a bit of a crutch, but I am well aware that even now I struggle with colour, not just actual colour but all the things I should automatically know, but don’t including recognising differing tones, which I became very aware of when I did an online test lining up colours in order of their tone and did really quite badly.
Anyhow, that’s a long way round of saying that I’m going to try and work with colours more.
I was looking through some minimalist work and became very interested in certain road scenes photographers were capturing, presumably in sunnier climes than the UK, where they used colours and shapes around road signage to create really strong graphical images.
I bought some coloured card and, this evening, made this image. It is quite obviously very like Piet Mondrian’s work, not surprising as that sprang to mind when I was looking at the above street photography.
So, I’ve learnt a few things with this first bash at this type of photography.
- You need to keep everything really straight
- You need to make sure all your lines are level
- Don’t set it out on your desk and then try and photograph it handheld whilst perched precariously on your office chair
- Get the tripod out and set it out on the floor!
Expect to see more of this over the coming weeks.
