Day Twenty-four Favourite colour scheme

Evening all, how do I find you this fine chilly night? What colour is your sky? Did you notice it earlier or are you consciously looking now. The sky out side this window is a dark inky blue that only Van Gogh could capture. All this talk reminds me of a wonderful book by Marcus Zusak, called the Book Thief.It is a shortish story told by the perspective of the character Death, and how his journey through the war in Germany led him to a small girl called Liesal three times, he tells her story, how she escaped him each time.  The downside to being Death is the ones left behind, he would call them, and so he would distract himself with colours, particularly the colours of the sky at the moment.  If you ever get a chance to read it, it is a most beautiful easy read and gives you a perspective of the war from the other side of the channel and the innocent people it hit.

Do you have a favourite colour? Do you know what it says about you and your personality? It is weird that we can look so deeply into something that is nothing more than just a bending of light.   I, however am indecisive and do not really have a favourite colour scheme, I believe in what I like to call moment colours, or in other worlds there is a colour for a time and a colour for a moment, it is all about what you want out of it.   Right now I am going through summer colours, bright yellows, oranges, greens, there is just something that sings newness about it all.  Winter has been so grey and harsh that just seeing a blade of green grass and the blooming of daffodils brings hope that warmer, brighter days are on the way.  On the other hand, during the cold months, reds, browns, okra and other earthy colours I find more favourable for their ability to make the room a little more cosy and comforter like a big swishy sofa and a sofa fleecy blanket.   As I said, a time, a moment and a feeling.

As you know I am also a huge fan of black and white and for all those out there who claim that these are neither a colour, I will ask you to kindly go back and look into the interweb to what colours actually make up both of them.  They are indeed both very real colours.  With this monotone duo, there is no messing around with silly names such as fuchsia, mauve, saffron, beige, they are what they say on the tin, but not the colours of a Oreo cookie, they are brown, just want to clear that one up.  This is what makes this duo so powerful, the colours not, the Oreo, although they have been powerful to me some nights.

I am a great believer in the power of colour and the emotions it can control.  I am not even sure that we even think about it much of the time, but as a photographer I have to be aware of the message it sends out.  Take for an example; I could take a simple picture of a tree on a hill, nothing artsy, just tree, hill and a bit of sky.  Now I will put a blue filter on it, it now feel cold, there is a sadness, a loneliness, tales of sorrow and depressing songs where meant to come from this.  How about if I take blue off and put on a nice yellow filter, now it is nice and warm, you see newness, happy and welcoming.   This is why we unconsciously choose the colours we have around us, not because of the colour but rather the feelings they give us.

We even go as far as giving more emotion and names to colours and once we say certain descriptions we know what you are talking about, for example, Envious, sexy, girlie, depressed and a bunch of others, hopefully you got green, red, pink and blue but why does this make any sense? Although I will say brown nosing makes too much sense.

Then there is the whole sex divide, or should I rather saw the silly battle of the sexes, girls wear pink and boys wear blue, it is a set in stone rule, however when a girl grows she can and wear blue, but a boy can never ever, ever wear pink without being looked as either a very rich toff or a homosexual.  Really? Are we really going to be that immature on just a shade of pink, I just shake my head and think, what the heck is the world thinking?  Boys, go and wear pink and be proud, I don’t care if you are gay or straight, just go out and lets get rid of these shackles.

To be honest it wasn’t really until the 1^st world war that a real divide began.  I recently found a article written in 1918 that told us the opposite, and this I quote from the paper “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger colour, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl” then they went to go on with “blue was flattering for blonds, pink for brunettes: or blue was for blue eyed babies, pink for brown eyed babies”
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/When-Did-Girls-Start-Wearing-Pink.html#ixzz2LqStcCUb

All in all it is a rather interesting read, just because of a light bent that way.

On the other hand, purple is not a colour, yes I will say that again just to blow your mind, Purple is NOT a colour.  I hear you shouting, but I can see it, it is real, but I assure you my dear friends, it isn’t.  Just when you thought that was enough to take in one day, I will blow your mind a further time, neither is green.

Check out this website for a interesting, well I thought it was interesting explanation.

http://deron.meranda.us/ruminations/purple/

For those who don’t want to be bored with science talk, I will put it in a simple terms. There is this thing called the colour spectrum which runs blue at one end to red at the other, being at either end, the colours will never meet.  So as we know purple or the colour we knew as purple is made up of blue and red, but if those colours never meet, we can never make that colour.  It is a trick of the mind; our eyes pick up the hints of blue and red and fill in the gaps it self.  Tricky brain.

At the end of the day, colour is nothing more than a wave of light in a literal sense but for an artist, we follow the sun, we chase that light, we notice that early in the morning the light would be warmer and gets bluer as the day goes on, hence the term Golden light.  I love shooting with a camera first thing in the morning with a model, there is such a wonderful heavenly glow that shines so delicately on the skin, on the other hand, it means getting yourself up and getting a model up, not something as easy as you may think.

Mmmm fancy an Oreo now, in totally the wrong country for it, so I will make do with a fancy chocolate and a calming tea, so night, night lovely peoples, enjoy and embrace those wonderful lights you call colour around you. Sweet dreams.