Reading

While thinking about how to approach assignment 3 on colour, I was leafing through books in a bookstore for ideas. I came across a book called Fred Herzog Photographs (Gochman C et al, 2011, Fred Herzog Photographs, Douglas and McIntyre) and was immediately struck by the use of colour in the images. I have never heard of Fred Herzog so I decided to read more. He was a pioneer in the use of colour for street  photography in the 1950s and 60s, a time when most photographers were using black and white. In fact, at that time, colour photography was barely taken seriously. It was regarded as a bit of a gimmick, lacking the gravitas of carefully composed and exposed black and white photographs. He took his photographs in Vancouver and used colour as a key defining element in his images, rather than just taking the same sort of images that had always been taken and developing them  in colour rather than black and white.

Herzog clearly set out to capture the madness and confusion of everyday urban life; people's apparently idiosyncratic behaviour, the jungle of signs and notices everywhere, tumbledown buildings and junk vehicles. However, in his images there is a keen eye for colour and it is often possible to identify the principles presented in the course materials. Here are some examples:

A good example in Herzog's work of the use of complementary colours, capturing just the moment when orange cars are in line with orange and blue buildings.

Colour contrast creating impact by shooting the yellow building against the blue sky.

This is one of my earlier images which featured a similar colour relationship; an old steamroller against a blue sky.

The dominance of reds and oranges gives a 'warm' tone to this evening shot. In many of his other images, he provides a dominance of blue hues, giving a colder feel.

One of the many examples of a colour accent in Herzog's pictures. He often uses red for his accents, which really stand out and give impact to the picture.

A typical example in Herzog's images of the profusion of signs assailing the eye. He enhances the effect by flattening the perspective with a telephoto lens, but the reds really seem to come forward and give a bit of depth.

I particularly latched on the the pictures of the wrecks because they resonated with the pictures I took for the exercises - pure coincidence as I hadn't found Herzog's work when I was taking them. The prominence of blues, especially the faded ones on the wrecks, adds to the feeling of a lack of vitality in the scene.

I, too, noticed the colour relationship created by rust on faded blue metal, which can be seen in some of my exercises (for example, see below). Herzog's picture is more interesting, however, with the presence of the workers with their climbing gear.

One of my images of a wrecked truck that used a similar colour relationship to the one above, fading blue metal and rust.

As well as the 'big pictures' like the one above, Herzog noticed the colour relationships in details. The harmony of the complementary reds and greens, along with the texture and shape, create a strong image. Again, this is something I tried to represent and there are examples of such detail in my exercises.

And this is my attempt at exploring the colour relationships in a close-up of a wreck. My image is greens with a tinge of red, while Herzog's, above is more red with a tinge of green.















Herzog's work gave me a direction for my assignment, basically to look for colour relationships in everyday street life, buildings, signs, vehicles, people, etc. Street photography is a style that appeals to me and a skill I would like to  develop. However, at this stage, I still feel very self conscious about walking around the streets and pointing my camera at people. To get over this I decided to take my camera to a few neighbourhood galas, something that is a prominent feature of North Derbyshire life in June and July. At such a public event, it seems more acceptable to go around amongst people taking photographs. The results follow in the next two posts.