A Color Story

As artists, sometimes we spend hours digging deep and attempting to pull out personal projects.  Ones with depth, room for growth, and that speak to our souls can be hard to come by.  But then, every once in a while, a project finds us.  And that’s exactly what happened to me.  I was reading through one of my favorite photography community blogs and came across their monthly challenge…a color collage.  I loved the concept of focusing on color and welcomed the idea of photographing something other than an active toddler.  I immediately chose green (thinking it was perfect for March and spring) and started looking all around for my color.  It didn’t take me long to remember that green and I historically have had our differences in the editing department (please tell me I’m not the only one to fight the color cast and neon battle).  I considered switching but realized that perhaps I had just stumbled upon my true challenge.  I was going to conquer green.

I could see that not all greens are created equal but I wanted my collage to be consistent.  So I took note of their qualities. Cool and warm, bright and muted…and everything in between.  At the end of the month, I uploaded all of them for editing and O.M.G.   I had created my very own editing nightmare.  I looked at the direction and temperature of light and began to notice patterns in how I had shot the images I loved (and the images I was less than impressed by).  And by playing for hours, I learned to use my editing tools to impact color like never before (LR and PS).

In the following weeks, I noticed a change in my approach to shooting and editing greens.  And I knew I couldn’t stop there.  If I was going to improve my color photography (and black and whites for that matter) I had to do a full color study.  So here I am.  Working through, month by month, to grasp a better understanding of color and all of the amazing things that can be used to impact it’s appearance in an image.

And as an added bonus, I am left with collages of the world around me, one color at a time.  Next up is PINK!

UPDATE: I’ve been joined by some wildly talented photography friends on this color journey.  Check out #colorstorycollab to see the others on Facebook and Instagram!