I’ve been spending some down time enjoying my hobby of photography recently. I often tend towards abstract, graphic images – frequently in monochrome. For a change then, I thought I’d peruse my photo archives using Google’s awesomely powerful search engine for specific dominant colours. Innevitably, many of the best examples are floral.
Richard – Red
Of – Orange
York – Yellow
Gave – Green
Battle – Blue
In – Indigo
Vain – Violet
Autumn is an odd time of year for me.
The scents can be warm and heady – spices, mulled wine, bonfires, burning leaves, weed (this is BC and there’s a lot of teenager-infested parks around here! 🙂 )
The colours are stunning of course. Back in the UK they were predominantly yellow/brown, but here the large-leafed North American oaks and of course the many maple varieties bring a wider gamut including some astounding reds and peach/orange hues.
I sometimes still feel unaccountably melancholy, and enjoy time alone, walking in the rain, splashing in puddles, and thinking my thoughts without the judgement or influence of others.
Yesterday treated us to steady rain – oh and a Tsunami warning late in the evening (why should the East Coast have all the drama?) I particularly enjoy steady rain. I am well equipped for it, being originally from Yorkshire, and most people are far more sensible and stay indoors. This leaves the entire neighbourhood exclusively to me and my camera. The hood on my waterproof is ample to protect my camera with its 50mm lens, and off we go…
I came across this neat little explanation of the basics of colour theory, in the context of design.
If you’re anything like me (i.e . male and not gay), you have limited to nil dress-sense… largely because the basic understanding of which colours “go” and which don’t is a complete mystery. (I’d like to clarify that I have nothing against gays except a slight jealousy of their vastly superior style.)
This little piece I found on Design Festival will explain why people snigger at your choice of socks…
Color Theory 101 – DesignFestival.
There’s a fine line between being cool, innovative and original… and just being, well… lame!
Think of snuggies, for example. So I came across Suck UK. I have to be honest and admit that there are indeed some items in the Christmas cracker/dollar store region of the naff-o-meter. But some of the other stuff is downright inspired.
For example “The Flower Grenade”. What a concept! Pre-loaded with seeds and growing medium. In a natural clay “grenade”. What a great way to have fun planting wild flowers… or breaking your neighbour’s window.
My favourite of course was in pursuit of the perfect tone of tea…
If you’ve ever struggled to pick a paint colour from those charts at Home Depot, this is NOT the book for you!
An 8″ x 8″ x 8″ book, an atlas if you will, purportedly of every colour that exists.
Well – technically, it’s only every colour that can be reproduced in the gamut of the digital offset press used, but let’s leave that for now.
Full article on designboom:Â tauba auerbach: RGB colorspace atlas.
So here’s a bit of a philosophical question for you… can there be such a thing as a new colour? Pantone believe so, and have a selection of 336 new ones to prove their point: PANTONE Unveils 336 New Colors
I’ve been thinking a lot about copyright of late. How to balance the protection of someone’s work with “reasonable use”. If I wilfully copy a grand master intending to defraud some mark by passing it off as genuine, then I shouldn’t be too surprised if I end up eating jail food. If on the other hand I try to duplicate it merely as a method of improving my own painting technique… is it the same offense? What if I show my efforts to others? What if they like it and offer to buy my work?
Is it more about what we do with the copy than the actual act of copying?
And then of course, we get to the complexity of the digital world. If I take a digital photograph created by someone and change its format to create a new image of my own, is it the same item still? As a digital image specifically, it can be uniquely defined very accurately as a specific stream of bits. If I change a few, is it still the same? If I take a colour image and make it black and white, is it the same?
Yet few would complain if I took a digital photograph of say the Mona Lisa because it’s obviously not the original. It’s in a different medium. So if I took a digital image off the web and printed it, it’s no longer the same medium, and therefore “not the same”, right?!
I think this personal connundrum will keep me entertained for a while longer…
Quieter Elephant 