Photo Session transcript: all about colors

The photography class of yesterday was a success. The gallery was full and everyone enjoyed Zephyru Zapedzki’s teachings. For those of you who couldn’t attend, the essence of the talk is after the jump. Also, check out the photos on Koinup.

zephyru Zapedzki: i’m a Portuguese RL painter
zephyru Zapedzki: i have a great passion and interest for all the “arms” of art
zephyru Zapedzki: i will be your teacher for the SL photography – Color discipline
zephyru Zapedzki: i will ask you for some patient if my english sometimes its far from perfection
zephyru Zapedzki: i would like to have interactive lessons, so at anytime feel free to speak or make questions
zephyru Zapedzki: is my intention to teach you all i know about colors and their use in SL photography

1.1 Let there be Light, and there was colors

zephyru Zapedzki: so let there be light!
zephyru Zapedzki: and there was color!
zephyru Zapedzki: yes
zephyru Zapedzki: light is color and color is light
zephyru Zapedzki: theres no color without light, neither light without color
zephyru Zapedzki: thats how it works in everything we can see
zephyru Zapedzki: if we see its because theres light on it
zephyru Zapedzki: the total lack of light is the darkness
zephyru Zapedzki: no colors
zephyru Zapedzki: for example
zephyru Zapedzki: a blue ball
zephyru Zapedzki: if you see it blue, its because the spectrum of light (distribution of light energy versus wavelength ) interacts with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors of the eye
zephyru Zapedzki: and we see the ball blue
zephyru Zapedzki: this is call the trichromacy
zephyru Zapedzki: the human capacity to see colors
zephyru Zapedzki: the human eye can distinguish about 10 million different colors
zephyru Zapedzki: here a good article to better understand this process http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichromatic_theory
zephyru Zapedzki: colors have always been important in human life
zephyru Zapedzki: since our ancestral origins, when in the green jungle the man see a colorfull fruit that advices for food
zephyru Zapedzki: or danger if not to eat
zephyru Zapedzki: till today traffic lights or as a symbol on the flags of the countries
zephyru Zapedzki: i think its not usual have color as discipline in RL photography lessons
zephyru Zapedzki: but its an important subject and it worths the knowledge
zephyru Zapedzki: because we all have the same sight process but different minds
zephyru Zapedzki: thats why we all have different favourite colors :)
zephyru Zapedzki: here is a very complete list of colors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colors you may add to your favourites now
zephyru Zapedzki: colors can be identified by their unique RGB (red, green, blue) values and the HSL (hue, saturation, lightness) values
zephyru Zapedzki: the RGB, as you know, is also use to move an object in the 3D SL space with the X,Y,Z
zephyru Zapedzki: so far
zephyru Zapedzki: all this its what we know today, but a lot has been studied about colors since the old Greece Aristotle

1.2 Color’s Theories

Kee Llewellyn: Aristote only had 8-bit colour so he didn’t have as many colours to work with.
zephyru Zapedzki: has been a lot of controversy on color theories along the years history tell us that perhaps Aristote was the first to study the color phenomenon
zephyru Zapedzki: but he believed that god sent rays of colors to the objects
zephyru Zapedzki: anyway he knew that the color, its one of the objects’s characteristic
zephyru Zapedzki: only hundreds years later, in the renaissance, history knew more sophisticated theories about colors
zephyru Zapedzki: with Aguilonius, Sigfrid Forsius
zephyru Zapedzki: Issac Newton, Goethe, to mention only a few
zephyru Zapedzki: Newton and Goethe created Colors wheels and triengles to explain the colors theories
zephyru Zapedzki: behind me theres color wheel
zephyru Zapedzki: and you can see the primary, secondary, and terciary colors
zephyru Zapedzki: based on the RGB principle
zephyru Zapedzki: any questions so far?

1.3 Pigment Colors and electric colors

zephyru Zapedzki: this is the called Subtractive sistem of colors
zephyru Zapedzki: or the pigment color
Kee Llewellyn: I’m sorry, but isn’t the colour wheel based on the primary colour system of red, yellow and blue rather than the additive colour system of red, green and blue?
zephyru Zapedzki: that’s how it works with the painters, mixing the color pigments
zephyru Zapedzki: with the red, yellow, and blue you can have any color
Explorer Dastardly: rgb and cymk makes up all …
zephyru Zapedzki: but in the pc screen, or tv screen theres another process
zephyru Zapedzki: its the additive system
zephyru Zapedzki: or light color
zephyru Zapedzki: or electric color
zephyru Zapedzki: or even electronic color
zephyru Zapedzki: its works by adding light
Sennaspirit Coronet: reflected light vs projected light yes?
zephyru Zapedzki: and the 3 basic colors for this are different
zephyru Zapedzki: well only one colors changes
zephyru Zapedzki: the yellow, for green
Dermott McMahon: but isn’t color wheel applying to colors in general not to technology of display? color wheel is same if you do analog photography, so it isn’t about rgb or cmyk or basic color or red, yellow, blue?
zephyru Zapedzki: here we have the pigment color wheel
zephyru Zapedzki: you see the primary colors
zephyru Zapedzki: the 3 bigger balls
zephyru Zapedzki: then the secondary ones
zephyru Zapedzki: green, orange, purple
zephyru Zapedzki: and terciaries
zephyru Zapedzki: you can take a copy of this objects
zephyru Zapedzki: and this one is the electric color system
zephyru Zapedzki: that amazingly i could do it work in SL
zephyru Zapedzki: as you see
zephyru Zapedzki: the 3 primary colors
zephyru Zapedzki: RBG
zephyru Zapedzki: when they added in light to each other they make another color
zephyru Zapedzki: then you see the magenta, cyan, and yellow
zephyru Zapedzki: and the total amount of light in the center makes the white
zephyru Zapedzki: thats how it works in our screens
zephyru Zapedzki: theres is also another method, its for print processes
zephyru Zapedzki: using 4 colors
zephyru Zapedzki: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black

1.4 Chromatic Wheels

zephyru Zapedzki: now using the center wheel
Kee Llewellyn: though technically, C,M and Y make all the colours in 4-colour printing. Black is only there to punch up the contrast. It doesn’t add any colour.
zephyru Zapedzki: we have the complementary colors
zephyru Zapedzki: its the color that its just opposite of the other
zephyru Zapedzki: the complementary colors its an easy trick to catch the eye for centuries in art
zephyru Zapedzki: its often seen the red with green, or blue with yellow
zephyru Zapedzki: we have also the family colors
zephyru Zapedzki: like the 3 blues you see there
zephyru Zapedzki: or the red/oranges
zephyru Zapedzki: http://colorschemedesigner.com/
zephyru Zapedzki: this is a very cool site where the schemes can be seen and play with it
zephyru Zapedzki: click on the color wheel
zephyru Zapedzki: at the top you see the schemes keys
zephyru Zapedzki: mono, complement, analog, etc

1.5 Color’s profiles

zephyru Zapedzki: theres some links i would like to share with you too
zephyru Zapedzki: well some are wikipedia, but there you can understand this complex color world more deeply
zephyru Zapedzki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichromatic_color_vision
zephyru Zapedzki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_of_light
zephyru Zapedzki: and this i think you will find more interest
zephyru Zapedzki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_symbolism_and_psychology
zephyru Zapedzki: where you find colors symbolisms
zephyru Zapedzki: i also try to m ake this example of color subtractive
zephyru Zapedzki: but its very hard to see the right colors
zephyru Zapedzki: try to see the red, blue, and green where the balls mix
zephyru Zapedzki: ‘Subtractive Color’ When pigments absorb some colors and reflect others, we call that ‘Subtractive Color’. This ‘Subtractive Color’ notation system is used where paints, pigments, dyes or printing are involved. Some hues are subtracted from the white light (white light is a mix of all hues) which illuminates an object, by the pigments of that object. Other hues are reflected to our eyes, giving the object its ‘color’.
zephyru Zapedzki: this link its also usefull to understand the basic of the colors wheels
zephyru Zapedzki: http://www.colormatters.com/colortheory.html
Kee Llewellyn: How can this theory be applied to Second Life photography?
zephyru Zapedzki: its not only the theory, its the whole knowlegment of colors
zephyru Zapedzki: can be very usefull for sl photography or rl
zephyru Zapedzki: its very usefull in visual arts, have this basic knowledge of colors
zephyru Zapedzki: really important tool in visual art, the color
zephyru Zapedzki: i have heard, not now on my study for this lessons, but times ago, that someone had a theory of colors, that the rainbow colors where the primary colors
zephyru Zapedzki: all the 7 colors
zephyru Zapedzki: primary
Breeze Underwood: this rainbow had every color on the wheel
zephyru Zapedzki: thats the prism spectrum
Kee Llewellyn: and the rainbow colours to. A rainbow is just prism physics in action
zephyru Zapedzki: thanks to Newton
zephyru Zapedzki: he have done the experince
zephyru Zapedzki: a cloed room, no light inside, only darkness
zephyru Zapedzki: and just a little hole on the window to let light enter and goes to the crystal prism
zephyru Zapedzki: then can be seen the 7 colors of light
zephyru Zapedzki: like in the Pink Floyd’s disc cover :)

June 2, 2009 at 2:41 pm | Uncategorized | 1 comment

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