Title: Stitches

Exercise: Create a still life from a small group of objects with very pure contrasting colours and even lighting. Take a colour image and then using your digital editing software process different black and white versions – effectively recreating the impact of different coloured filters used with black and white film.

Approach: I decided against using food because I seemed to be working a lot with fruit and vegetables recently.  I had been doing some sewing so went through the cottons and buttons and selected a few different colours and shapes to use. The duck rubber was just for fun!

Title: Accents and combinations

Exercise: Produce three of four images with colour combinations that appeal to you. They can include two or more colours.

Approach: These photographs were taken over a number of weeks as I noticed colours in my environment. Unlike other exercises I generally did not have something in mind before I took the photos, I took to carrying my camera with me and taking shots as I found them.

Title: Proportions

Exercise: Produce one photograph for each combination of primary and secondary colours, adjusting your distance, focal length or framing to compose the picture in the following proportions:

• Red & Green 1:1
• Orange & Blue 1:2
• Yellow and Violet 1:3

Approach: these images were taken over a period of several weeks as I became better able to ‘see’ possible combinations in the colours around me. The focus was primarily on colours in the domestic setting.

Title: Green

Exercise: Using the primary and secondary colour wheel find scenes that are dominated by a single colour. With each colour that you find vary the exposure slightly to produce an image that most closely matches your desired colour.

Take your time. Try not to concentrate on artificial colours, make sure you examine the natural colours of materials too. Use the experience to develop and refine your colour sense.

Approach: It seemed the one colour there was an abundance of was green and mainly in its natural form.

Title: Blue

Exercise: Using the primary and secondary colour wheel find scenes that are dominated by a single colour. With each colour that you find vary the exposure slightly to produce an image that most closely matches your desired colour.

Take your time. Try not to concentrate on artificial colours, make sure you examine the natural colours of materials too. Use the experience to develop and refine your colour sense.

Approach: I thought that blue would be relatively straightforward but at this time of the year I struggled to find any natural blues.

Title: Purple

Exercise: Using the primary and secondary colour wheel find scenes that are dominated by a single colour. With each colour that you find vary the exposure slightly to produce an image that most closely matches your desired colour.

Take your time. Try not to concentrate on artificial colours, make sure you examine the natural colours of materials too. Use the experience to develop and refine your colour sense.

Approach: Finding different purples proved to be a bit of a challenge and I probably took these over the longest timespan.

Title: Red

Exercise: Using the primary and secondary colour wheel find scenes that are dominated by a single colour. With each colour that you find vary the exposure slightly to produce an image that most closely matches your desired colour.

Take your time. Try not to concentrate on artificial colours, make sure you examine the natural colours of materials too. Use the experience to develop and refine your colour sense.

Approach: Finding different reds was not as difficult as I first imagined it might be and I was able to source a combination of both naturally occurring and manufactured colours. I did find photographing red quite difficult in terms of getting the right tone and hue.

Title: Yellow

Exercise: Using the primary and secondary colour wheel find scenes that are dominated by a single colour. With each colour that you find vary the exposure slightly to produce an image that most closely matches your desired colour.

Take your time. Try not to concentrate on artificial colours, make sure you examine the natural colours of materials too. Use the experience to develop and refine your colour sense.

Approach: Undertaking this exercise in late Autumn has proved challenging although I did find examples of foliage and the last remaining poppies. As far as possible I have tried to find naturally occurring yellows but I was drawn to the waterproof fabric as the yellow was so strong.

Title: Orange

Exercise: Using the primary and secondary colour wheel find scenes that are dominated by a single colour. With each colour that you find vary the exposure slightly to produce an image that most closely matches your desired colour.

Take your time. Try not to concentrate on artificial colours, make sure you examine the natural colours of materials too. Use the experience to develop and refine your colour sense.

Approach: This was my first set of specific colours and started with the extraordinary sunset that coloured the low cloud orange. Once I started looking I found a range of other naturally occurring ‘orange.’

Title: Nasturtium

Exercise: Find a strong, definite colour and take a sequences of shots all composed the same but using different exposures. Start with the average metered setting and then stop down the aperture by half stops.

Approach: I had a couple of attempts at this exercise just to get a feel for the true effect. The sequence that showed the most obvious results was that of the Nasturtium flower.