Photo Challenge 7 – Technicolor
February 3, 2009 by rockportrait
Yeah yeah, I used the American spelling. Less characters to type, and technicolour just looks weird.
Tech⋅ni⋅col⋅or
/ˈtɛknɪˌkʌlər/ [tek-ni-kuhl-er]
1. Trademark. a brand name for a system of making color motion pictures by means of superimposing the three primary colors to produce a final colored print.
–adjective
2. (often lowercase) flamboyant or lurid, as in color, meaning, or detail.
Steve’s submission
My thoughts:
This is representative of my typical way of thinking about things – left of centre, although I’m sure Mat would have thought of this too. This is a collage of “technical colour” things around my house. I don’t have much else to offer about this image today so I’ll leave it to others for a change. And thanks to Joepi for her help on how to use Photoshop to create a montage/collage or whatever it’s called.
Joepi’s submission
Joepi says:
Sinulog is a festival held in Cebu every year on the 3rd weekend of January. It is the Philippines’ version of Mardi Gras (sans the nudity as this is a religious festival).
The colors you see being displayed for you in the Grand Parade are just plain fabulous and earns the “WOW Philippines” tourism tagline. Among the hundreds of photos I took that day for the uber-technicolor event, I chose this particular photo obviously for the many colors in the photo but also because of the challenge I had in trying to bring out the colors despite a gray sky which dampened the color in a lot of my photos. If anyone has more tips on how to bring out sunny colors on a dreary day, please speak up!
Taken with my Canon 450 D Portrait lens.
My thoughts: An extremely bright image which I think fits the criteria of our theme perfectly. Excellent choice of crop, too. I like the tightly cropped portraits. I’ve seen the entire set of Joepi’s Sinulog photos and I have to say that the colours are just great the way they’re presented. In my view the overcast day actually helped them to stand out. Personally I dislike shooting in bright sun as it tends to wash out colours for me. Ken is the light expert, someone might want to wake him up out of hibernation and get his opinion.
Katy’s submission
Katy says:
This shot was taken in a park nearby ages ago. I tried to play with the color blend a bit by rummaging up on PS – channel mixer basically and monochromatic noise set to 15 to make it look old. However, I’m not convinced whether I got the idea right.
My thoughts: This is actually quite similar to how I imagined technicolor movies might look (I don’t watch anything that isn’t in full colour, with lots of explosions and CGI). In my view it also has an old Kodak (or was it Agfa) slide look about it. Hmmm, wonder if that’s why Katy used a slide in the image – to make that connection…
Ken’s Submission
Ken says:
This is a photo i took some time ago of Victor Pender, a local Melbourne musician. I really like the shot as it very much represented his personal style. I like that it has a kind of retro/disco/techno feel.
Victor was sitting on my dining table with black muslin draped behind him. I used a pair of Bowens monolights, one high above to create the butterfly lighting and the other behind to give the green backlight. The spot in the corner and lens flare was applied in Photoshop. I knew as soon as I fired the first shot of this sequence that it would be the best shot of the night.The sharp shadows are created using a small reflector on the light source and keeping the light close to the subject to minimise the light depth of field.This was shot with Nikon’s 28-70mm at f8.0 ISO 100. I tend to always stick to the middle aperature on the Nikon lenses when in studio as they prove to be sharpest and have no distortion. I control the exposure with the lights power adjustments.
My thoughts: I always remember a couple of things that Ken has taught me, and one is the use of F8 on my studio lenses to get the sharpest images. I also marvel at how he thinks through the lighting to create the end result. Years of experimentation and practice, I suppose. This is a superb portrait of Victor with a lovely touch of dreaminess to take it into the realms of rock. The colours of the lens flare are very cool, and I like the slightly muted, rusty tones.
Mat’s Submission
Mat says:
I was considering heading into the Melbourne CBD to shoot some of the fantastic graffiti art that decorates the city, but with the high temperatures we’ve been having lately I was worried that my camera might melt, or I may spontaneously combust, so instead I decided to shoot a portion of my unfeasibly large collection of t-shirts.
I took a few shots at different exposures and played around with the HDR Merge function in Paintshop Pro to come up with something nice and bright but also a little unnatural. And yes, I do wear these t-shirts on a regular basis!
My thoughts: Yes. Mat does wear these t-shirts. I regularly go home with a headache after he insists on accompanying the orange one, which delights in shouting boorishly at anyone who will listen. Another excellently thought out and composed photo.
Next Challenge
It’s Ken’s turn this time with his suggestion of “Texture“. For your enticement I have a very intriguing and possibly difficult theme coming up after that, suggested by Katy.
Looking forward to all images being submitted by close of the clock on Sunday 15th February.
Wow – Joepi’s shot is so bright and colourful it makes my wardrobe look drab! She gets the nod for my favourite shot because of the composition – that beautiful smiling face is actually able to draw the eye away from the colours and makes me wish I’d been there to enjoy the fun!
Katy has captured the look of early technicolor perfectly, though I feel you could crop away some of the sand to bring us closer to the action on the climbing frame.
Ken’s shot is technical perfection as always and Victor has that lovely sense of edgy menace about him. This could be a publicity still for a TV crime drama like Underbelly 3! What’s butterfly lighting?
Finally Steve’s shot is a little too busy for me. I love the concept of the illuminated controls and panels looming out of darkness but I can’t quite find a focal point and my eyes don’t know where to rest.
Whilst fun, to me technology and colour are both confusing. Hence a confusing image. However, as I mentioned to Mat offline, my heart really wasn’t in this one.
Interesting that you think Victor’s shot gives him an edgy menace. I get the opposite effect. He looks very friendly and approachable to me. Quite happy, in fact.
Matt, Butterfly lighting is a single light high above the model that creates short shadows under the nose and chin. This is typically used for beauty shots on models as it shows off the eyes, cheeks and lips. It also narrows the face slightly.
It never ceases to amaze me how one word can bring about four very different images! That’s actually what I look forward to most in these challenges.
I first read about the Butterfly lighting in a link sent by Steve when we were talking about lighting effects: http://www.vividlight.com/articles/1615.htm. I found this article very helpful in learning about different lighting styles although I haven’t really put them into practice just yet.
Steve, you should have told me that was what you were doing when you were asking those questions about PS! I would have also made a suggestion to have one unifying or central item in your photo. It still spells Technicolor but it could use a little tying up if that makes sense. But I love the fact that you were able to catch the colors. I often find myself losing the color as it becomes too bright when I photograph anything digital. What settings did you use?
Katy sure did capture the vintage feel and again I love the use of multiple images rolled into one. I have just started Photoshopping again and I may need to brush up on my cropping skills!
Thanks, Matt! I don’t think it beats your wardrobe though! LOL! All of you are welcome to come and experience Sinulog. Happens once a year every January – you have a year to save up for a trip!
Thank you Ken for posting what you did to get that effect. I think I shall try and experiment with what I can do with “home lights” to get that effect as I don’t have much equipment just yet.
Looking forward to the next challenge!
PS – Matt, I love the fact that you used ROYGBIV! And I still can’t believe you got all colors! LOL! Lemme go check my wardrobe now… I got challenged!
I was wondering whether they were in the order of the colour wheel, but wasn’t interested enough to find out. LOL
Oh, and thinking about my own “photo” again, I actually look at it in circles. I don’t apply normal photo viewing techniques because to me it’s not really a photo. So I just let my eyes swim around it any way they want.
To get the correct exposure on the LEDs I used spot metering on the 30D. This gave me a very fast shutter speed, with a fairly closed aperture. Best way to practice that without a light meter is simply to shoot manual and keep looking at your results.
Thanks!
I was very happy to discover I had all the colours of the rainbow in my wardrobe. All I need now to complete my collection is infra-red and ultra-violet.
You need to photoshop your t-shirts.
I really enjoyed all the submissions. My favorite was Joepi’s for composition, impact and subject matter
The best way to bring out colours with such a photo is using the LAB colour space in Photoshop. I have experimented extensively with this colour palet and the tools within LAB give excetional control of balance, saturation, sharpness and contrast. There is a very good book called the Canyon Canundrum??? However, I never got through the first few chapters (…it was all that i needed and more) as it is very technical.
Stephen’s photo works well for me and is kinda what i expected he would do. I don’t agree with Matt on it being too busy. I actually think it needs more. I good way of demostrating some additional depth is to overlap some images with the backgroud images faded or at a lower exposure and defocused to emulate depth of field.
Katy,
Nice work as i do sence the dating of the photo. I almost expect to scrath and bend damage or the dust and scatches of a super8 film.
Matt,
Lets go shopping
PS sorry for the typo’s….i am in the back of a taxi in Sydney as i type this…..;)