Colour Theory revisited - experiments

SATURATION & EXTENSION

Keeping the settings on my camera the same I revisited some of the contrasts that we learnt about in colour theory.

Contrast of Saturation is a where a colour is contrasted with a more/less saturated version of itself. 

Here both colours are green but the towel is much more highly saturated and brighter than the desaturated carpet.

Contrast of proportion looks into which colour 'jumps' out of the page more due to the size and contrast of it.

This is more obvious if you look at a digital recreation of this photograph:

Here the green square seems to be closer to you than the darker green square- as it is in the photo above

whereas if you swap the colours around it does the opposite and the darker square sinks into the lime green square.

THE ORANGE EXPERIMENT:

I photographed the same orange against a variety of backgrounds to see how it affected the colour of the orange. I didn't change the camera settings or the light in the room.

This is about as orange as the orange looked in real life.

Putting the orange against a bolder orange demostrates contrast of saturation and makes the orange look less orange than it did before

Against a very desaturated orange paper the orange almost went entirely yellow. I don't know why this happened because theoretically this should boost the orange, it must have been to do with my camera.

I found these two objects that have a very high complimentary contrast.

There is simultaneous contrast happening at the borders of the blue top aswell.

High contrast settings on camera:

There is quite a lot of activity at the border of these two high contrasting complimentary colours

If you just look at the contrast of tone then the different colours are almost indistinguishable.

Complimentary contrast of proportion:

Gradients due to contrast of Hue:

I find it interesting how there are natural gradients formed when you have a blue shape and then but a slightly darker blue under it and a lighter blue over it. but if you cover up one of the blues then the gradient disappears, it's jsut your eyes playing tricks on you.

COmplimentary contrast