ROYGBIV: VIOLET!

When looking for photographs to illustrate the color violet, I was struck by how difficult it was. I found about 30, looked at them all, and realized that I didn’t have a clue about which one(s) were really violet.

Some of the pictures were very pale, some vivid, some bluish, some reddish, some a brilliant purple, etc. Which ones should I pick for this post?

So I did an online search for the color violet . . .

Wikipedia had this to say, which I thought was pertinent:

“Violet and purple look very similar; but violet is a true color, with its own wavelength on the spectrum of visible light, while purple is a composite color, made by combining blue and red.”

The colors in the first grid (a public domain image) can all be referred to as violet, but the colors in the second grid (also a public domain image), with a much redder vibrancy to them, are purple.

I’m not going to be this picky in future ROYGBIV postings, but I thought it was interesting to try to nail down the color violet and to realize that a lot of the photos I’d chosen were screamingly purple. I’m not particularly concerned about color accuracy, but I do think it’s important that we are at least aware of color differences and how we use them in our work.

©Carol Leigh
 All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

ROYGBIV: INDIGO!

Indigo is a tough color to find because there are so many varying tones, ranging from blackish-blue to greenish-blue. But here are three that I think conform to the indigo concept.

The top photo is a combination of photos I took of very old papers given to me by Kathleen Amt and, of the three photos here, it's my favorite. It's probably not YOUR favorite, but that's okay. Something inside me changes when I see it, and that's pretty much my criteria.

And then there's a photo I took of a rubber stamp impression, a rubber stamp I bought in England specifically for this purpose. To it I added some texture, some colors, and three postage stamps.

Finally, I included a photograph of a freighter sailing up the Columbia River in Astoria, Oregon. I toned it a blackish-blue to make the image more monochromatic.

We have been in the Whidbey Island house for a week now. Are we unpacked and everything in its place? Hell no! Were we ready for a heat spell the past few days? No. Were we prepared to have to get rid of a hornet's nest over the door to the deck? For deer that eat hydrangea flowers? For robin-eating owls? For a mowing-induced gnat blizzard? And for what I heard around 4:30 this morning? That would be no, no, no, no, and no. None of that was mentioned in the real estate listing before we bought this house.

So what happened at 4:30 this morning? I'll try to write about it tomorrow . . .

©Carol Leigh
 All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

ROYGBIV: BLUE!

Blue's pretty much a universally beloved color and it's always easy for me to find examples that incorporate blue. Not so easy, however, for me to find photomontages I've made with blue as the main color, but here are three I particularly like.

Scratched metal forms the basis of the first picture, undoubtedly photographed while I was wandering around the fishing boats on the Oregon coast. And I like the feeling of movement I created by using the red blobs, which seem to drift from left to right.

We move from movement to still life in the next shot of the pear, to which I added dripping paint and texture from the ubiquitous fishing boat. I like how the golden brown color of the pear works with the complementary blue surround.

And then lastly is a photomontage that yes, contains photos of fishing boat textures. The square boxy thing? I believe that came from a piece of paper I photographed, paper I'd used to clean a brayer after painting something.

I used to be able to identify every item in my photomontages, "Oh, yes, that's a part of my grandmother's earring I mixed with a photo of the bottom of an oil can and a picture of a blender lid." I've now made so many that sometimes I don't even recognize my own work. "I made THAT? When? Darned if I remember how I did it. But it's cool, isn't it?"

Ha!

It's now Monday and I pray that my Internet access via my desktop computer is up and running. Tough to do this on a cellphone. It's still Wednesday the 17th as I write, but I'm optimistic.

©Carol Leigh
 All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

ROYGBIV: GREEN!

And now we come to green, a particularly soothing color in nature. Because I'm less of a nature photographer than anything else, I find I have a plethora of green manmade things to choose for this category, such as the abstract design I found when wandering around fishing boats on the Oregon coast.

Next I feature a photo of birdhouses Chris made and that we had in front of our Oregon house. These eventually disintegrated and Chris made some more, similar in style. And this year we have tree swallows nesting in the middle house. Made us feel good to provide "affordable housing" for these birds.

And finally, a close-up of the side of a bus that June, Jill, and Gisela found for me when I visited North Carolina a few years ago. Do they know me well, or what?! This was such a cool junk yard to shoot in, although their "watch out for snakes" warning was a bit distracting . . .

It's now Sunday, although I'm writing this on Wednesday before the move. I am hoping that we have happily awakened in our familiar bed, that the cat isn't too freaked out, and that we can now begin opening boxes (which is actually a lot like Christmas -- we won't remember what's in each one!) and placing things where they seem to be most appropriate, knowing, of course, that in another three months everything will be all changed around again as we realize the couch looks awful over there, wouldn't it be better over here?

Green is an especially appropriate color for today because our house is completely surrounded by tall conifers, so much so that when the light is right, our white ceilings display a definite green tinge that's reflected from the trees.

©Carol Leigh
 All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

ROYGBIV: YELLOW!

Next in the color spectrum is yellow, a bright, cheerful color, a color that really stands out. So the "Beware Alligators" sign is pretty tough to ignore when you're wandering around Florida.

A painting show I watch says that shadows are always purple, so paint them some tone of purple. And yellow's complementary color is purple, making yellow look particularly striking. The photo of the yellow boat was taken early in the morning when the light was a bluish-purple, and yup, the boat looks especially good next to that purple-colored dock.

And in the last photo, I noticed how the buoys looked dramatic against the dark background of a fishing boat. A symmetrical composition, with the rope dividing the photo in two, seemed to be the right way to go. Clean, bold, simple.

It's Saturday today, the day the movers will be offloading our belongings. I'm writing this on Wednesday, so here's hoping everything arrives in one piece and that a new life/lifestyle is about to begin for real. I know you wish us well.

P.S. Happy birthday, Laura! A year older. A year wiser.

©Carol Leigh
 All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

ROYGBIV: ORANGE!

Go to an antique/classic car show and you're bound to find at least one outrageously orange car. I'm not so sure I would want to have an orange car, but I just love photographing them.

This coming weekend I'll be missing two different car shows -- one on the Oregon coast and another on Whidbey Island. Alas. But there will be more to come, and always with at least one orange car.

The first photo essay I ever sold was all about antique cars. Not the whole car, just the "parts." That was so long ago. But my love for the close-up and the abstract remains today.

By the time you're reading this, we are en route from Oregon to Whidbey. With the cat riding shotgun . . .

 ©Carol Leigh
 All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

ROYGBIV: RED!

The colors of the rainbow can be remembered by the acronym ROYGBIV . . . the rainbow colors of Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet.

The movers are here today, loading the truck, taking all of our stuff up to Whidbey Island. This means that I'm going to be computer-less until I get set up in a new office up north. Yikes! 

At least I've got a cellphone where I can stay in touch, but the creativity hub is in the desktop, and that's going to be out of commission for awhile.

Before we left, I set up some posts for the next few days, each one devoted to one of the colors of the rainbow. Hope they make you more aware of color and inspire you to perhaps search for one particular color today. 

In this case, it was easy for me to find the color red at the farmers' market, where tomatoes and radishes looked particularly tasty in diffused lighting. And the red buoys? One of my favorite subjects. Here, too, I shot in overcast lighting, which makes the red colors really gleam and pop.

So wish me luck! We travel up to Whidbey tomorrow, Chris in the pickup with the cat (oh, lucky him!) and me following closely behind.

For now, so long from the Oregon coast. Whidbey Island, here we come!

©Carol Leigh
 All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

ROYGBIV: VIOLET!

The last color in the spectrum is called violet, but it sure seems to encompass a variety of colors including purple. I mean, when does "violet" become "purple?"

I think of violet as being very light and purple as being quite dark. But then, frankly, I don't really care. Let others do the testing and I'll just do the looking.

So. Looking through my photos, here are three that I consider violet/purple. Look at the bluish tones in the hydrangea flowers and compare that with the reddish tones of the building in the third photo. The final photo seems to be somewhere in between.

That's it for now with the ROYGBIV extravaganza. It came in handy while I was gone, something I pre-programmed to fill the space, and something I hope you found interesting.

And what did I learn? To pay more attention to colors, to variations of color, and to not really pay attention to their names, but rather how they work together, don't work together, and how they can play very nicely with one another if you're careful.

Roygbivally yours,

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

ROYGBIV: INDIGO!

Indigo is an intriguing color, and one of my current favorites. It's sort of dark and mysterious, luscious and rich, and often contains tinges of black, green, and grey. Looking through my photos, as I was trying to select examples for you, it was sometimes difficult to tell the difference between a dark blue and an indigo.

The first photo, of a security keypad, was taken in a darkened alcove. The original photo was more silvery, but I darkened it somewhat and then added a photo I'd taken of some clouds, which lightened the center part. The golden background sets off the indigo colors quite well.

The next photo, of a tree, clouds, and the ocean, was taken in Encinitas and, obviously, I tweaked it using an HDR-ish effect to bring out the texture in the clouds. The color indigo comes into play more at the right side of the frame. But look at that little splotch of sunlight on the sea just to the left of the base of the tree -- I love that small touch.

The final photo is one I took in Kyoto, a box I saw in a darkened alcove. The dark indigo surround makes the lighter, complementary yellow color of the box stand out beautifully.  And because I metered off the brighter yellow, the darker surround became even darker. Nice!

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

ROYGBIV: BLUE!

A peaceful, relaxing color, blue is universally loved. Ask anybody what's their favorite color and invariably it'll be blue. Rarely do you hear someone say "aubergine" or "chartreuse."

I found these blues first of all on Route 66, then in a boatyard on the Oregon coast, and then at a car show I photographed just half a car, copied it, flipped it, pasted it together again to create a cute little "bumper car" sort of creature.

Wishing you blue skies today!

©Carol Leigh

P.S. Just what color IS aubergine anyway? Think "eggplant." And chartreuse? Think light, bright yellowish-green. . .

All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

ROYGBIV: GREEN!

It's interesting to see the variety of greens we have around us. The first two photos, both taken in Astoria, Oregon, have a yellowish cast to them. And then look at how blue the third photo is, the photo of the pine tree sprigs. The yellowish greens have a definitely lighter, airier feel to them; I personally am more drawn to the green colors with a bluish tinge.

Notice I didn't say anything about an apparently cranky cat on the railing. Reminds me too much of you-know-who here at home . . .

Moving onto blue next . . .

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

ROYGBIV: YELLOW!

Such a happy, bright color! Makes me smile just to see it. Here are three of my photos depicting the color yellow, and in each of them I used a pretty blue, which sets off the yellow quite well.

The yellow flower looks good combined with a bright blue background. The "Y" on a fishing boat looks good, too, combined with a scratched blue background. And then there's the photo of homes on a street in Tucson, Arizona, where I (in my extremely early years of Photoshop Elements) made the sky particularly blue. A very fakey blue to my eyes now. Come to think of it, the yellow's pretty fakey, too, isn't it? Oversaturated? Oh, yes, but ah, well.

Looking forward to the next post, GREEN!

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!