Prompt # 24 - Colours

Prompt # 24 - Colour - My Favourite Thing

Colour is one of my favourite things. “Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes.” The first speech I ever gave in high school was about the psychology of colour. The first time I had a project displayed in class at university was in a colour lab when I made a swatch by pasting stripes of yellow peas, red and green lentils to a base, like those avocado greens and golds of fifty years ago. I always search for colour to create compositions in my photography (as opposed to other less obvious elements such as line or texture.) On reviewing my hundreds of photo files, I see that the most dominant colour I feature is red. Of course I shoot a lot of green, living as I do here in the temperate rainforest. I like to play with colours and light, sometimes with more success than at other times.

I love almost all colours (except orange) but if I have to pick one, it will usually be turquoise blue. Maybe because turquoise is my birthstone. I don't think it's because I am blue or depressed, but rather that I'm just a nature lover and blue is found in rocks, sky, and reflected in water and glass. And it is often used in man-made things like paint and fabric dyes.

I usually wear muted colours, shades of black and grey, with bright accents like hot pinks, reds, and purples. I never wear earth tones with the exception of sand/beige used as a basic which goes well with black. I never think of black as a colour of mourning or “goth.” I think of it as elegant, as “the colour of knowing.” I associate my mother with greens which is why I describe her as being moss, cedar, jade in “Bridal Falls.” If she had been able to work it, she would have lived her entire life outdoors.

Here are some of my Turquoise shots. Enjoy.

All photos © J.M. Bridgeman