Unit 2 research
For this colour assignment, I decided to focus on green. In the middle of the spectrum, green is considered a cool and calming colour. In western culture it’s commonly associated with nature, spring, fertility, youth, wealth, money, environment, generosity, inexperience and envy. In the United States, green is linked to financial wealth; in India, green is linked to spiritual wealth.
Street photography
I really love Nick Turpin’s street photography, where he uses one colour, green, creatively in his shots. Taken in the City of London, where you wouldn’t expect to see much green, Nick Turpin has creatively used a small aperture, available light and a building’s reflective glass for the below image. (Note: Nick mentions on his website that he currently works with the Fujifilm X100F, which is small with a fixed 23mm lens).
This photograph, taken by Matia Alvial in 2020, nicely draws attention to the beach stones covered with green algae, and is a lovely photograph for composition and colour.
Photographer, Richard Misrach, known for his large-format landscape photographs and for being instrumental in pioneering the use of colour photography in the 1970’s, is considered one of the most influential photographers of his generation. Richard Misrach’s photograph of a cabbage crop in Texas, taken in 2015, uses green, a large depth of field, with a focus on lines and composition. This image is particularly strong given the context in which it has been taken – the fence to the left of the image (that seems to compliment the green) is part of the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. Richard Misrach has been photographing the two-thousand-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico since 2004, with increased focus starting in 2009. This image is part of the project Border Cantos.
Summary
Green is one of my favourite colours. I love the smell of fresh cut grass, the outdoors and wide open spaces. I live in London but my heart belongs in rugged countryside. For me, green represents energy and happiness. To get my shots, I visited Barnes Common where there’s an abundance of grass, trees and evergreens. I mostly concentrated on a few small areas of foliage – getting up close to branchlets and leaves, using aperture, zoom lens and ISO to experiment with a narrow depth of field, letting the subjects in the foreground pop; and also using a larger depth of field to maintain detail throughout the photograph. I also looked for opportunities to experiment with composition, looking for interesting angles and frames. I particularly liked the green cycle lane on Priory Lane, towards Richmond Park, even though it’s faded and worn, and getting a shot in low light was a challenge. However, the cold blue sky and moss covered trees and fences either side of the lane gave the photograph a nice green monochromatic effect.