Week One Readings

After reading the first passage, I thought a lot about how we take the the things around us for granted. The world presents us with beauty in all things and often times we don't take the chance to appreciate it or even look at it enough to truly see it. As artists, we often call attention to those subtle but beautiful occurrences that happen in the world around us. From a non-photographer standpoint, I believe that that is a common goal of photographer. To capture moments, emotions, objects, and scenes that are often overlooked. While doing photography as an art form, I want to attempt to do just that.

The reading about color made me think about the fact hat we all perceive things differently. I understand the different scientific reasons for color involving light and how that translates to photography purposes. However, I come from a different background of chemistry in art. As a ceramicist, my understanding of color is not immediate. Oxides, and materials combine in a certain way upon the presence of heat to create a finish which contains a certain color. Color in its relationship to photography seems so much more point blank, which is comforting in comparison to the unknown of firings. Yes, different screens in different lighting with different printers will translate an image different, and whose to say I see the same as you to begin with. But at the end of the day there is a comfort knowing that black and white will make grey. While in the ceramic studio, black powder (Manganese Dioxide) and white powder (Magnesium Carbonate) will make some sot of highly toxic bubbling mess of a surface and some indeterminate color, all of which can vary between firings and over time when materials age. There's a uniformity in photography in relation to color, which allows artists to speak the same language with known facts even if some think in CMYK verse RGB depending on their desired program. This universality is something that can allow photographers to hold a common and reliable ground throughout their practice.

Perception plays a big role in color theory. People have certain associations, shared or personal, that may be paired with certain colors and emotions. This can drastically affect an image created by a photographer. Manipulating these color associations and warmth or coolness of colors may be advantageous to making a viewer react a certain way. Knowing and experimenting with these associations can be very powerful.