For those of you that follow what I do you know I have predominantly shot black and white photographs, be that film or digital. My latest videos mostly involve colour film, and usually the film or photos taken in videos are to show what a camera, lens, or the film can do, rather than me using the photographs for my ‘portfolio’.
I have found myself wanting to shoot colour more recently. I attribute this mostly down to evolving as an ‘artist’. My background is music, and I was always evolving and changing what I was doing, and I feel that progression is a normal thing for someone that is creative.
The hardest thing I have found is what I want out of my colour photography. How to I want to portray what the photos show accurately, but to my own taste. Specifically, I shoot RAW, so what will my colour editing look like to be consistent? And what do I like about different tones...
As shown in my ‘Big trouble in little Venice’ video, I didn’t know at first what I wanted. At first they were just very bright and sickly, and I was unsure why this was. I was too focused on the saturation and vibrant controls in light room. It wasn’t until recently that I discovered that if you scroll down, you have more control over the tonality of the photographs.
I have identified that I like more faded/ pastel like colours (perhaps closer to certain film emulsions, rather than exact ‘as seen colours’. I have always like dark greens, faded reds, but I have always struggled with colours like yellow and green. I feel that I have now come to a look I feel is right, and have applied this to my photography. I have also kept them very contrasty, which has been something I have incorporated into my style for a long time.
So how do you get to where you want to be with colour and editing? Well, as a test, I wanted to take all my digital photographs that I processed as B&W, and converted them to colour. Or to be more exact, take the RAW file and go from there. With this in mind, I have gone through a large portion of digital photos and converted them to how I envision them. This means that certain photographs I thought were rubbish became more stand out, and some that I thought were beautiful lost the magic that they had.
If you look in the photography tab of this website, you will find that I have added a colour portrait gallery. This contains my colour photography, which has given my photos a new lease of life. Please take the time to have a look or alternately check out my instagram (link can be found in the menu above).
In conclusion, I am enjoying re-touching my photos into colour. I am finally producing what I envision when I take photographs in terms of colour and not just B&W. I shot B&W for so long, all I did was eat and sleep B&W photography. - Sly.