Monday, October 25, 2010

Shelburne Falls, MA

I have so much to write about that I am going to split up my posts to hopefully allow you to digest my newsiness.

Last week was a fairly full week, during which we took our last planned (outdoor) field trip. We went to a town called Shelburne Falls and - for the first time - took shots in color for an assignment. We had to explore the warms and cools of color, showcasing our "best" work yet. We got these nifty little things called "passport checkers" - this little passport looking item (imagine that!) has two "sides" to it, both of which we have to take pictures of before each series of shots we take. One of them is to set (custom) white balance on our camera before we take our shots. The other is one of a color palette for post (production) when we're working in Photoshop or Lightroom (two computer programs we use).

So here's what we have to take a picture of each time...this is of the white side:



And this is the colorful palette...



We need to make sure that we never touch the palettes. The oils on our skin can affect the pigments on the color checkers and render the pictures useless. We were told that the typical/expected "shelf life" of a color checker is 2 years.

We're told to make sure that at least 50% of the palette is showing in the frame and the checker should be in focus every time. We also need to make sure the checker is in the same light as whatever we're taking a picture of, hence why our subjects would hold it in front of their face (for example). It is a tad annoying to add yet another step but helps a ton later on, so we're not having to manually correct color that may be inaccurate b/c of the camera's capture.

Anyway, here are the 4 pictures I had to take. Cool colors are blues and purples. Warm colors are reds, oranges, and yellows. We try to stay away from greens because they are neutral.

Warm on warm (Jeff):


Cool on cool:


Cool on warm (Karin):


Warm on cool:


We had a fun day walking around and enjoying the cool, fall day!
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1 comment:

  1. :) This is really great SAZ - I'm loving seeing these updates on your blog!

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