Colour and Value

Value is the varying levels of light and dark present within a composition. It is essential to conveying a certain mood within an image, ie within a picture on a more solemn subject matter will have an ver all value or key comprising of much darker sets of tones where as something happier more jovial subject will have a lighter key.
However more than just setting a mood, value is of fundamental importance in separating the various elements within a composition and thus can be used to draw attention to key pints of interest. This is achieved by creating a harmonious sense of contrast between the light, mid and dark tones of an image with the areas of highest contrast (such as light on dark) being pushed to the front of the image and therefore often taking the centre of interest.

The main way in which value can be used to achieve this is by creating compositions which apply, light against dark, dark against light, dark and half-tone against light and light and dark against half tone some very basic examples of which are displayed above.

As well as value we also have to carefully consider colour within our compositions. This is both both in an aethetic sense (ie some colours don't work together/value is still needed to be considered so as to create harmony within the image) and a conceptual sense. As learnt in the visual skills module the wrong choice of colour can completely alter the intended meaning of an image.


Daniel Danger

For example in this above image by Daniel Danger the use of colour palette comprising of either reds or blue completely alters the mood. The one comprised of blues has a very ethereal, still and mysterious atmosphere to each that gives the impression of intense emptiness and silence. Conversely the red gives the image a very aggressive and tense feel that results in a foreboding sense of imminent violence.

Colour Ways

Subsequently we were given the task of creating a series of colour ways based off of an outfit we were wearing so as to better grasp how colours interact with each other.
In the below image I picked three similar but alternate colour ways. I think the bottom two should be more successful as both are composed of 4 tones of the same colour and then one contrasting colour used to accent them. However the value of the accenting colour (due to those present within the image) isn't of a high enough contrast to stand out from the other colours. Where as in the first image, although the contrast in colours isn't as dramatic, there is a wider and more harmonious range of values present.