A new project for this week kicks off a series on leading the eye.
There are many ways of leading the eye of the viewer through your photographs. Our ‘Leading the Eye’ series of projects guides you through each of them, starting with how to lead the eye with colour. This doesn’t necessarily have to be one colour. Careful combinations of complimentary or opposing colour can be just as effective.
Your challenge is to use colour to capture the attention of the viewer and lead their eye through your photographs. For this project you will be required to produce three final images which use this technique. This project is not just about using ONE colourful object in isolation to draw the eye but about learning to balance a number of colourful elements in a composition that can lead the viewer’s eye not just in one direction or to one area. So therefore try not to make all of your images focus on single colourful objects but make at least one that balances two or more colourful objects in the composition. Be sure to explore the placement of the coloured object or objects in different parts of the scene, to see how placing them in different areas of the frame effects their dynamic in the composition.
Rationale
Learning to effect and control the way that people move around your photographic compositions is key in learning how to make dynamic and engaging pictures. Colour can have tremendous power in this way. Concentrating on colours in this project will also help you see them more interestingly afterwards.
Helpful Vocabulary
counterpoint, isolation, complimentary, opposing, balancing, balance, harmony, discord, resonance, vibrance, primary, secondary, tertiary
Technical Considerations
Be wary of combining two primary colours in large expanses of the frame. Different films would render colour in different ways so with your DSLR, experiment with modifying the contrast, saturation and vibrance of colours in-camera.
Historical References
Joel Meyerowitz, Ernst Haas, Sam Abell, Martin Parr, William Eggleston.
A gallery of relevant images
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You can download this project as a PDF by clicking here.
roberuto
April 28, 2010
that a great idea! try it!
Charlie
April 28, 2010
I am available for artistic direction. Reduced rates for japanorama students. ; )
Adi
April 28, 2010
I had a few questions about this assignment. First, is there any spesific lens restriction? Like you can only use one type of lens etc. Second, do we have to take it continuously without deleting the photos like the carpark project? If so, how many photos? Could we take it one by one? Third, how much do we have to take? (no-limit is a little bit to much, i guess
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Looking forward to this assignment. *doki doki*
Alfie Goodrich
April 28, 2010
No lens restrictions. No restrictions at all, really. You can take as many as you like but you should pick out three final images to submit. If you are on Flickr, put all the ones you take in a set and then title the final ones ‘Final: name’ and then I know which ones you chose. It’s always good to see the full set you took and then see which ones YOU chose.