5 posts tagged “color”

We had a quite a lot of snow fall over the last three days and when the weather's like this I'm always tempted to take pictures.

I find snow scenes difficult. The lack of colour often results in dull monochromatic photographs. Even though the fresh white snow makes everything seem quite bright to my eye the snow-laden overcast sky actually reduces the amount of light considerably and I end up with underexposed images. The snow has a blue-ish cast which throws off my camera's white balance although I have to say my new Canon Rebel handles this better than my point-and-shoot Sony. Plus I'm still learning my new camera so I'm not as adept at manipulating its settings as I was with the old camera.

Cold Reception

These shots are of one of my favourite subjects, the beech tree in our front yard. For an interesting contrast, I've also included some images from last fall taken while this tree's leaves were changing colour. I've been thinking about doing a year-round or four-seasons study of this tree but it's unlikely that I'll make much progress on that project since we're planning to move away as soon as we can find a suitable house and property. Maybe there will be some good trees to photograph in our new neighbourhood.

Snowy Beech Tree

Our first on-site house prospecting trip is planned for next week. This house hunt is taking much longer than we want but now that we've finally found a real estate agent (the third one we've tried out) who's actually actively doing something for us we're ready to make the trip over to the Island to look at a few places.

Vancouver Island Backroad Mapbook

Thinking about moving is almost as potent a trigger for my map obsession as thinking about travelling. This morning, thinking about travelling somewhere to look at places to move to had me desperate to get my hands on some new maps. I've played with Google Earth a lot lately but today I had to have something more. I searched the web for online topographic maps of southern Vancouver Island, didn't find anything, and was considering driving through the snow and slippery slush to the Around The World Maps store in New Westminster when I came across Backroad Map Books. I bought a new map book and can hardly wait for it to be delivered. Oh happy day!

The leaves on the Beech tree in our front yard display an amazing range of colours, sometimes shifting magically from brilliant green to deep maroon and back within a single day in the spring and summer. During the last two weeks there was a particularly spectacular display of yellow and orange and copper as the leaves changed colour and started to fall.

The last two photos were taken just one day apart, yesterday and today. We had a big wind last night and almost all the leaves were blown away. There are only a few firmly attached ones left, still more greenish-yellow than the orange and copper colours they turn before they fall.

I'm taking a Photography Art class and part 1 of last week's homework was to photograph a colour. I was assigned magenta. We were to walk around outdoors with our cameras and take pictures of lots of different things in our assigned colour.

At first I thought it would be impossible to find magenta coloured objects outside and looked around inside my house until I could find something to take outside to photograph, my Swiss Ball. Turns out what's a mauve ball indoors looks much bluer outdoors. Then I got a manicure and picked magenta polish which actually looked more like a pinkish-plum colour inside the salon. And I just happened to have my camera with me on a grocery shopping trip when I found these gorgeous flowers and ornamental cabbages.

While almost all of the images displayed here have been tweaked in Photoshop, my Photography Art instructor will see the untweaked versions complete with exposure problems and bad white balance.

Magenta Cabbage

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Magenta Cabbages

I have an excuse to talk about one of my favourite subjects, volcanoes.

In the news this week, the Nazko Cone, a small volcano here in BC about 100 km west of Quesnel, is waking up after approximately 7200 quiet years. Geologists reported earthquake swarms beginning on October 10th. The earthquakes are originating about 25 kilometers under the volcano. This is a sign that magma is probably rising but whether it will eventually come right to the surface is unknown.

Nazko Cone

Unlike the strato volcanoes along the Pacific coast near the Cascadia Subduction Zone, the Nazko is a relatively simple cinder cone sitting over the eastern edge of the Anahim Hot Spot. It's highly unlikely that it will be as explosive as Mount St. Helens was. Another better known hot spot is the Hawaiian Hot Spot.

Magenta Nail

The other interesting things that I have to report today are a long overdue haircut, the artful restoration of my formerly natural blonde hair colour and my very first manicure. I feel very pampered right now. I did ask several times for clear, uncoloured polish but when presented with the shades, couldn't resist choosing magenta. This photograph will be included in my photography homework this week.

Last night I went to the first class of the new course I signed up for, Photography Art. This course is being taught by the same instructor as the Beyond Automatic course I took last spring.

It's daunting. I'm a techie geek at heart and this week's class and homework assignment has me feeling like I stepped off the boat into some sort of foreign land where everyone speaks gibberish and drives on the wrong side of the road.

The first class was all about colour and the homework is:

1. 

   Magenta
   Photograph a colour. We're supposed to walk around outdoors with our cameras and take pictures of lots of different things that are this colour. I was assigned magenta! Where am I going to find magenta coloured things outdoors in the gloomy grey and rainy October days of southwest BC? I want to switch my colour to green or red or blue or yellow or even cyan. Anything but magenta!
2. Photograph the same outdoors scene in natural light at regular intervals from dawn to dusk. This is not quite so bad but I'll have to get up earlier than my normal waking hour. Carolyn, our instructor, suggested that we try to pick a sunny day. Well, it turns out today is sunny but it's already noon and too late to start this assignment. I have six more chances to find a sunny day. What are the odds?
3. Photograph a multicoloured object or set of objects at all four sides of our house, north, south, east and west. Use both natural light and flash. This one sounds easy. All I have to do is put some brightly coloured things in a tray and go outside.

Civilization IV

But right now, I don't feel like photographing anything. I'm going to play Civilization IV. I've got six more days to do the photography homework. No problem.