52Frames: Complementary Colors

For someone who’s becoming more and more attracted to black and white images, the photography challenge of complementary colors was an eye-opener. All week, I was SO aware of colors.

Turns out the recycling bins in Gainesville are complementary colors. Who would have thought about that, if not for this challenge?

In the beginning…

I took a lot of flower photos and then used the diptic app to see if I could make a foursquare of them. I liked the flowers on the left way more than the ones on the right, which got me to thinking…

Looking for inspiration…

Perhaps I could use the two on the left, duplicate the images, and play with them to make an Andy Warhol-style image. Two years ago, on a day trip to the Columbia Museum of Art in South Carolina, I saw his Mao Tse-Tung silkscreen set and it was amazing up close as well as from across the room.

I got to work playing with the flowers. Here’s the purple flower, cropped and manipulated in Lightroom…

The final image…

My goal was a more graphic-arts looking than straight flower photography. I wanted to get the yellow flowers more painterly but it turned out to be hard to do in Lightroom. Hmm, I must be missing a preset! (Lightroom insider joke alert: there are a zillion presets for Lightroom. Presets can “automagically” enhance or completely change an image in seconds flat so people create and sell preset collections of all kinds. I have a dozen preset collections and, yet, not one that would posterize my images.)

I enjoyed this week’s photography challenge on two levels. Walking around, I was very aware of how complementary colors show up every day in the most uncommon ways. And I enjoyed playing in Lightroom to create an image out of a wisp of an idea.

Art is what you can get away with.

Andy Warhol

Handy Links

• See the 52 Frames album for complementary colors: Click here!
• See all my 2020 52 Frames images on my Smugmug page: Click here!
• Visit my photography page: Click here!