Color

I learn so much from The Kat Eye View of the World and her Exploring with a Camera series.  This week's theme is no exception...except I am finding it so hard!  Knowing that the current theme this month was The Color Wheel Part 2: complementary, triadic, and tetrad, I went on Saturday's World Wide Photo Walk with the intention of capturing color.   Ummm, not as easy as I thought it would be.

For one thing, there was a lot of monochromatic images.  The skies were gray and so was the cement and a lot of the glass.  For a moment the blue sky was reflected in the gray water, but that only gave us one color.

Monochromatic:

Scavenger Hunt Sunday -- Blank Space

Sometimes it appeared like lots of colors--which is was--but it turned out they were all analogous, colors next to each other on the color wheel, like purples and blues.

Analogous: purple, blue, and almost green:

or
Analogous: red, orange, and yellow:

And this next one was monochromatic, too, blue again being the only color from the sky, but I converted it to Black and White just because, making it nochromatic, right?  No color?

Scavenger Hunt Sunday -- Black and White

But I tried to find some complementary, like red/green or yellow/purple or blue/orange, and maybe this is a stretch, but I have decided that in this lighting, the "blue" hour the grey benches and yellow lights become blue and orange, right?

Complementary: blue/orange:

Scavenger Hunt Sunday -- Complementary Color

No?  Okay, I'll throw one from my archives.  This whole color wheel thing helps explain why my little boy with blue eyes looks so good in orange; this was taken in the area we took the walk, so really it fits right in.

Complementary: blue/orange:

or How about Complementary: Yellow/Purple:

Kind of muted colors, but the yellow in the walls and the purple in the windows, right?  The whites and browns and grays all count as neutral colors.   (I am ignoring proportions for the moment because I can only learn one thing at once.)

Or Complementary: red/green:

Scavenger Hunt Sunday: Food (The restaurant we were supposed to eat at on the walk.)

So then I was supposed to find triadic color--3 colors on the color wheel that form a triangle like red, yellow, and blue--but that was difficult since there were so little color in a lot of the scenes.  But maybe if we define the colors in the building picture a little differently?

Triadic: red/yellow/blue:

Okay, that is a complete stretch, even more than my other stretches, but I like this picture!  The brownish walls and brick could be red, the mustard yellow walls are yellow, and the windows are now blue--just ignore the green and purple in the windows.

Okay, to prove I do know what the primary colors are, I'll share one from a few weeks ago.

Triadic: red/yellow/blue:

If you only have two of the three colors from a triangle it is called a triadic variation.  Those were easier to find on my walk since it only required two colors.  (I have a triadic purple/orange/green in this post.)

Triadic Variation: red/blue:

And

The last type of color sets we learned about is called a tetrad or tetrad harmony.  It is 4 colors that form a square (two sets of complementary colors) or a rectangle.  (Not all rectangles are squares but all squares are rectangles.)  4 colors in a picture, well that is too much to ask.  I can do two, three, five or more, but four...not so often.  At least not on the walk.  Or at least I thought so, but if you look closely...

Tetrad Rectangle: red/green/blue/tiny bit of orange:

But just as there is a triadic variation, there is a tetrad variation where you can leave off one of the four colors and have only three colors.  This makes it possible to fit almost any picture into the theme :)

Tetrad Variation: Rectangle: yellow/purple/green...missing the red:

Tetrad Variation: Rectangle: blue/orange/green...missing red:

Scavenger Hunt Sunday: Landscape, because I don't have a good landscape photo from the walk.

Then the question just becomes, where do colors like burgundy and teal fit in?

Is it a red/blue triadic variation, or is it just a photo from the walk that I want to share? As a child I colored almost every picture/outfit in coloring books a combination of burgundy and teal, or some variation of them.  What does that say about me?