OCA Course: Colour Relationships.

Here's the one I can't get rid of!

8. Mandarin Drake. Canon EOS 1D Mk111, 500mm, 1/750 sec. @ F5.6, ISO 800, hand held. These ducks are dazzling, and present many colour combinations, including opposites of red bill and green crest, orange cheeks and deep violet breast. They are not native, having escaped from private wildfowl collections and established themselves as a wild breeding population.

7. Shag. Canon EOS 1D Mk111, 500mm, 1/750 sec. @ F5.7, ISO 800, hand held. The green eye is a colour accent on its own, but the similar colours of yellow and green harmonise nicely.

6. Waxwings. Canon EOS 1D Mk111, 500mm, 1/1000 sec. @F5.6, +1EV, ISO 800, hand-held. There are several colour relationships here, but mainly similar ones with the yellows of the berries, bird's wing and tail tip, and the reds of the leaves and the wax tips to the secondary feathers of the bird's wings. These all contrast with the blue sky. I like the curves presented by the bird's contortions whilst feeding. There have been a lot of Waxwings in the UK this winter - normally they stay in Scandinavia, but it's been even colder there!

5. Mute Swan. Canon EOS 1D Mk111, 500mm, 1/2000 sec. @ F8, +1EV, beanbag and car window. The red bill is a nice colour accent in an otherwise almost monochromatic scene. I gave one stop extra exposure to maintain detail but whiten the snow. Pure white is in the wind-blown feathers of the swan.

4. Blue Tit. Canon EOS 1D Mk111, 100-400 zoom @ 390mm, 1/200 sec. @ F8, ISO 400, fill-in flash. Who says British birds aren't colourful? The blue and yellow give a nice contrast, complimented by the yellow background.

3. Fairground Lights. Canon EOD 1D Mk111, 100-400 zoom @ 375mm, 1/15th sec. @ F11, tripod. It took me ages to find anything with the yellow and purple needed for this element of the exercise. I eventually found this whilst out birding, at the harbour fun-fair. The proportions of 1:3 yellow:violet aren't correct, but I couldn't find a way to crop it any better.

2. Crescent Moon. Canon EOS 10D, 24mm, 1/8th sec. @ F9, ISO 400, tripod. This was taken from my patio during the prolonged cold spell. The afterglow orange and the blue sky are about 1:2.

1. Poppy Field. Canon S90 compact, 15mm, 1/200th @ F8, -0.33 EV, ISO 200.

The red/green combination overall is about 50:50. Slight under-exposure brought out the colour a little more.
Colour Relationships: This exercise is a bit out of sequence because I found it difficult (as the workbook suggests) to find the correct relationship with yellow/purple. The blog reads from bottom to top again, and may contain an extra image as I can't seem to delete them from the blog on my new iMac. I guess I'll find the button some day.