Exercise 24: Color Relationships

Exploration of color continues in this exercise calling for images demonstrating the following color relationships in the following ratios.

Red-Green 1:1
Orange-Blue  1:2
Yellow-Violet 1:3

These relationships were suggested by Goethe, who assigned the following numbers to each of the colors.

9 Yellow
8 Orange
6 Red
6 Green
4 Blue
3 Violet

So, what you might observe here is that the colors are paired from the center out, or the ends in, with the brightest and darkest, the next brightest and darkest, and the two equal.  

Red-Green 1:1

This seemed to be a fairly common combination.  

Blue-Orange 1:2
This combination was more unusual.

I found this a week later (08 Feb) while on an early morning bicycle ride.

Yellow-Violet 1:3
Two weeks of keeping my eyes open on walks in Satwa, SZR, and both men's and women's campuses and all I found was this rather weak example. Weak because the violet is quite a subdued hue, especially in comparison with the bright yellow truck.  So, I staged my own photo with my purple shirt and bicycle reflector vest.  Voila!

The assignment consists of a second part in which other found color combinations may be presented.

These two show similar but contrasting relationships.  The image of the cans is dominated by the brighter yellow, that of the palm frond by the darker violet.  The cans were designed to call attention to themselves - yellow the brightest color, red the most noticeable.  The palm fronds, on the other hand, were added for contrast, to help accentuate the violet of the Purple Queen.  

Here we have green paired with blue and yellow.  The sign and sky with grass seems to create a calm and soothing combination, whereas the yellow pumpkin calls attention to itself and pulls the eye down to the bottom of the image.

This image suggests the person who created the display understands something about color theory.  From left to right the colors get progressively brighter.

At the top of this post is a photo from last month's trip to Israel and shows a fruit juice vendor in Tel Aviv.  Combing all the brightest colors - red, orange and yellow - the shop clearly stood out from everything else on the street (which, I suspect, was the intention).

I mentioned in a previous post being haunted by Freeman's advice not to photograph paint catalogs.  These color exercises have made me realize how much of the city's color is deliberate, including the color relationships.  Even among natural objects, such as the palm frond, there was evidence of intention.

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