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Colour

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No not yet another one of those endless expositions on colour theory in image making, rather a bit of blether on my love of colour in my photography.

I have always loved colour photography and when I say colour I mean rich, deep, saturated, vibrant colour that sings out to you from your images.

Not the pastels nor the naturals nor indeed the faddy 'mutedchromes' beloved of others, but full in your face colours. So where does this obsession come from? 

Well it is all the 'fault' of one company, Fujifilm. They invented this wonderful medium called Fujichrome Velvia RVP 50 which, back in the good old days, was the medium used by all us serious nature photogs as well those in fashion, product, interiors and artwork photography. 

 

Fujichrome Velvia RVP 50 was a colour reversal aka positive aka slide film with super fine grain, vivid colour reproduction exhibiting very high levels of saturation and vibrancy. Now I say was as there is still a Fuji Velvia 50 being sold to this day by Fuji but it is a more modern reformulation which I have never tried and can't vouch for, but is said to mimic the properties of the original.

Anyway back to the plot. So I grew up with images exhibiting high resolution, fine grain (read no noise) and vivid colour reproduction, made on slide film. Nowadays I reproduce these colours using scanned professional colour negative films such as Kodak Ektar 100 and Portra 400 and making my pictures on Zeiss lenses with high micro contrast and 3D pop: Sonnars, Biogons, and Planars.

 

So anyway back to the plot for real this time. As I meant to conclude, in my own personal little creative world I see in colour with many tonal variations and high levels of saturation and vibrancy, and I want this to be reflected in my photographs. I dream in colour, I see in colour and I photograph in colour. Mine is a colour filled universe.