Hey y’all! This week’s topic is “contrast” and that could mean a few things: contrasting colors, contrast between the subject and the setting, contrast between light and dark. I attempted to capture each of these this week. I’m attracted to contrasting light in general, but I’d like to challenge myself to look for color in my shots more often.
My first idea was to shoot my black dog on my already high contrast black and white rug. He’s a reluctant model. I shot him from above to make the carpet fill the background and used Aperture priority to keep my aperture low to gather as much light as I could in my dim living room and blur the background. Please forgive my dirty carpet.
f/3.5, 1/15th, ISO 1600
His paw looks weird because he hurt it and has a bandage on it. Poor pupper.
Then I went through and found an old shot of some green weeds growing through a grate over a rusty red background.
f/5, 1/80th, ISO 400
And the last one is a shot I took of a safety helmet in the rubble of an abandoned building. Pretty self-explanatory.
f/4.5, 1/80th, ISO 500
These aren’t my most aesthetically pleasing photos, but I think each one properly represents the different types of contrast that Chelsea listed for our topic this week. It’s really just a matter of keeping your eyes open for unusual compositions. I think it’s a great practice to get out of your comfort zone and look at the world around you differently. Are any of you shooting on the theme each week? If so, how has it changed your photography practice?
how did Justin join the Northrup crew? He is married to Chelsea’s ex-husband’s cousin!
Time for a portfolio review. Framed Listings real estate photography, beautiful work! Dial back your HDR on some of these, just make sure you’re not losing all the contrast. Put your drone shots on the front page as well, people will love them. Great pricing page and about page. Maybe crop out that picture of you with phallic chips. Otherwise very impressive work!
Submit some non-photography Squarespace portfolios to us so we can review those as well.
how should you price prints? That’s hard. Online prints don’t sell high at all. Prints bought in art galleries can be sold for much more, but it really depends on where you’re selling and your skill level.
And how should you price post-processing? Tony and Chelsea disagree! Chelsea says post-processing should be an add-on, Tony thinks it should be default.
someone needs to make a gif of Chelsea’s extended side-eye here
Color! The possibilities for this topic are endless. I had grand ideas of what I wanted to do, but limited resources. I had visions of bold lipstick, bold nails and a white background. Unfortunately I don’t have a studio to work with and I was my own model, so that limited my ideas a bit. But I was reminded of a shot I took for my food project of a clementine on a teal plate.
I decided to work with the same color palette and more fruit. I painted my nails teal and found the most aesthetically pleasing clementine and lemon in our fruit bowl and took them into my back yard for the natural light. Harsh light is good for fruit because you want the specular highlights, not the flat light that you may want for portraits.
I shot in aperture priority with a low aperture to blur the background as well as I could, and took a bunch of shots of my hand holding the fruit. Some in front of the wood decking and some in front of the ivy.
f/3.6, 1/3200th, ISO 200
f/3.6, 1/3200th, ISO 200
Next I wanted to shoot my lips in a bright color with the green background and teal nails. This was a bit more challenging, but I finally downloaded the Olympus app for my phone so that I could control my camera from in front of it. Compared to Canon and Nikon’s apps, this one is great. I was able to focus and shoot myself from my phone while my camera was on the tripod in front of me.
f/4.5, 1/800th, ISO 200
f/4.5, 1/640th, ISO 200
f/4.5, 1/800th, ISO 200
For all of these images I tweaked the colors so that they were more saturated and complementary to each other. I edit my skin a ton because it looked terrible, and lightened it a bit so the colors would pop more.
Chelsea has a great tutorial on changing colors in Photoshop here that might help you out, although I did all my edits in Lightroom:
Do these work for you to convey color? I think the fruit shots do for sure, but I’m not sure about the self portraits. This was a really fun project for me, and I’m feeling more inspired than I have in a while.
Hello! You guys nailed complementary colors this week. Next week break some rules with your portraits. Should be fun! Don’t break any laws.
Guys, so sorry about the sound. The split screen mutes for a while. Every week we seem to have to adjust something and then it all goes crazy. Don’t worry, you’ll get to hear my voice later in the show.
Over to me with your question, which I’ll have to write out for you below since you can’t hear me:
Tony mentioned in a video last year that he’d look into how DxOMark makes their money, did he ever? He tried! They never answered. Manufacturers pay them, but we’re not sure how that works.
Oh, we got a new weird piece of gear for blinding Chelsea. Pergear LED light used for matching studio light.
Let’s look at Nick Petrides’ portfolio. Lose the format, staggered is distracting. Your images are great though! It’s not really your birthday. Tony proves again that he is probably an android by his rendition of Happy Birthday.
compare the D810 to the D5? D810 is better for portraits, the D5 is heavy. D5 is best for low light and is unbeatable for sports and durability. The D810 is better for landscapes, portraits and studio work.
Aaron is alive as well, as of the show last night
Virtual Reality headsets? Yup, they used the Samsung VR. Give us virtual chocolate cake already.
what’s your/my favorite hair color? I don’t care, don’t tell me.
Ok, back to photos! Tony chose his favorites from the thumbnails. Just consider them all picks. The sound is garbage during this part, so just look at all the pretty colors.
What’s the strangest photography-related dream you’ve had? Tony has photography stress dreams, Chelsea does not. I dream about my former life as a house cleaner. Chelsea has B&E dreams.
Tony, what’s your monitor resolution and when are you going 5k? Less than 4k and never?
Let’s look at Narked Frog Photo’s portfolio. What is that name even? Pare down your images, too many of the same thing/same person. Change your text color and maybe your background color. sdp.io/portfoliochecklist for tips.
Chit-Chat! Our favorite part of the show where you say stuff and we say stuff back. This week is weirdly positive.
Color theory can be applied to all forms of visual art, including fashion and interior design. In this post, we’ll look at how it can be utilized in the realm of photography, dealing specifically with the complementary color scheme.
