Colour & Notan

What role does value play in planning composition?

• Varying value in an image can be important in making your content easily identifiable and interesting to the eye - theres no point having a silhouette of a man standing against a dark background, because you won't see his shape properly!
• Creating greater contrasts in the focal points of your image will draw the eye of the viewer.
• Value can help create a mood or atmosphere within an image - a sad image would require darker and low contrast values, whether a dramatic image would maybe suit higher contrast between light and dark, and a happy image lighter values with little contrast.

How can we use values to focus attention on certain information?

• 'By contrasting the value of one thing with the value of another, we can create a centre of interest' - light against dark, dark against light.

According to the handout, what are the most commonly used basic value plans? How many values does it recommend you use in a picture?

• light against dark, dark against light, dark and halftone against light, light and dark against halftone.
• It recommends to use only one value pattern - its important to remain consistent and not overcomplicate.

As always, although this information is really interesting, can you challenge it?

• Value can also be used to create balance in an image, and not just a centre of interest.

In the session we created 3 images each working with a different value pattern. This helped me to see how creating contrast can bring focus to certain objects, figures or points within an image. As well as how how the values you use can important in influencing the tone or atmosphere of an image. (which I showed through the facial expressions of my king).

From this session we were set the task of taking a picture of ourselves in an outfit, and then from this creating a colour palette in photoshop. I was quite happy with this task because thinking about and putting clothes together is something that I really enjoy and do in my free time anyway. (the only thing I have to apologise for is the lighting, as it doesn't really do the colours justice)

• I choose this outfit because I think all the colours work really well together. There is a consistency of blue and white repeating throughout in the white shoes, white stripes on the trousers and across the top of the jumper. Then the blue of the trousers and on the jumper actually match quite closely. 
• The orange and the blue compliment each other nicely (blue and red being the complementary colours, but I think the orange is red'y enough to still work).
•  The orange jumper is the focal point of the outfit - the brightness of the colour contrasting against the more muted blues and whites.