Creative photo series: Colors in series
Today's article is all about color. Once again, we have a little idea for you to take part in. Thomas Stelzmann has set himself the task of photographing various mini-series on specific colors. To do this, he simply goes out and looks for things from our everyday environment in the same color or color combination
Color in photography is a topic in itself, because photography has been around much longer than there has been color photography. A lot has happened since the world's first photograph by Joseph Nic?phore Niepce, taken in 1826 on a tin plate coated with asphalt.
1839 Daguerreotopia was invented. The supports here were silver-plated copper plates. The pictures: Black and white.
1841 Talbot followed with the calotype. This process laid the foundation for the classic development process. The pictures: Black and white.
Some color came into play in 1842 with Herschel's so-called cyanotype. His process was based on iron compounds instead of silver, and his solutions dipped the photographic papers in a rich blue. The images were therefore blue and white instead of black and white. Nevertheless,
Even the ambrotype (collodion wet plate), invented in 1850/1851 by the duo Archer and Le Gray, did not produce color photography with the yellowish-brownish images. It was only when James Clerk Maxwell added a red, a blue and a green filter to three identical black and white photographs in 1861, backlit them as if with a slide projector and made them coincide to form a single image, that the world's first color photograph appeared, albeit using this little trick. The motif is called "tartan ribbon", ask Google for it, I'm sure you'll find it. The rule was: shoot in black and white, view in color.
Nonetheless, this trick finally made it possible to satisfy people's desire to be able to show color photos of their colored surroundings. However, the cost was high. What "normal person" had every photo at hand in triplicate, and what household had an assortment of color filters besides the barrel of sour beans and last summer's preserved cherries?
"Photography is celebrating its 190th birthday this year, but it has had to make do without color for almost half that time."
in 1871, the first film material was available in the form of plates that could actually record colors; the first emulsion for classic films, as you can still buy them today, was created in 1932.
Photography is celebrating its 190th birthday this year, but it has had to make do without colors for almost half of that time.
I can only touch on the significance of colors for our lives here; I don't presume to write down anything insightful at this point. The creation of colors and their effect are a science in themselves.
However, at this point you can reflect on the use of colors in photography.
For my part, I prefer black and white photography.
It does not offer any space for the often undesirable signal effect of different colors and color combinations, but instead draws attention to other things that are just as important or more important than the colors themselves, but which take a back seat in the presence of the colors. It is graphic aspects, shapes, surfaces, angles that give a black and white picture its essence. It appears more modest, sketchy.
If you want to give colors attributes from the world of sounds, such as "loud" and "quiet", then black and white pictures are in many cases "quiet pictures". They are like quiet people who, when they do say something, also give off something of weight and meaning.
Photographs with roaring colors can also do this if they are well done, but with loud colors they can also become the photographic Donald Trump: Loud, shrill, but insubstantial and without content. It's up to the people behind the camera to decide which messages colors should and can convey. In any case, colors are good for photographic vision exercises, which you should do regularly to stay "in training".
In my opinion, photographic vision is the basis for success with the camera. Only when we learn to see as the camera sees will what we have seen be the same as what the camera records. It can take a long time to learn how to see, and sometimes I have the feeling that you never quite master it. But practice makes perfect, as we all know, so I went around with my camera and made it my mission to pay attention to different colors and color combinations in my surroundings. I wanted to create at least three motifs for each color or color combination. These were then to be put together into a kind of "mini-series" of three pictures each.
The amount of attention you have to pay to your surroundings during this exercise is enormous.
Not only do you have to see these motifs, but you also have to estimate how likely it is to "catch" a particular color again on your round trip. Should I take the picture now? Can I continue this series? What if a person is part of the motif, but I can't or don't want to ask them if they want to be pictured? Questions upon questions.
Light also plays a role. A certain color in the shadow may have almost no effect, it looks bland and dull. This motif does not deserve a place in the series, even if we might find it interesting. Not everything that we find interesting looks just as interesting in photos, especially not if it is to be seen by other people besides us.
"In my opinion, photographic vision is the basis for success with the camera."
The tour through the city has brought various insights
The color "orange" is very present when you see it, but it is not that common. It is sometimes seen on construction vehicles and other construction site equipment, as well as on municipal vehicles such as road sweepers and refuse collection vehicles, but otherwise "orange" is not as common as you might think. The color blue is very common, especially in combination with white. Company logos, road signs, food packaging, stickers, etc. Look out for the combination of white and blue. It really is everywhere! Surprisingly, you come across the color "pink" more often than you think. I don't warm to this color, pink barriers in the city annoy me just as much as pink jackets or other objects. I find this color hideous when it doesn't occur naturally. The color "purple" is so rare that I haven't managed to create a series of three. I'm missing one picture. What a nuisance. A few hours of constant attention is quite exhausting. Nevertheless, I come home with several complete color series, each showing completely different objects. The subject of "colors" is almost inexhaustible, and even I, whose heart beats for black and white photography, have fun dealing with colors photographically.
Except with pink...
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