Colour Light & Composition by Sue Bishop

I met Sue Bishop when she came to my camera club in Kingston to give us a talk on photography.  The talk was in two halves, the first about colour, light and composition, the subject of this book, and the second was about macro photography of flowers.  Hugely inspired by Sue's images, I ordered a macro lens that same week, although I have yet to really get the hang of it.  Following Sue's talk, I bought the books and decided to re-read Colour Light & Composition ahead of getting into Part III of TAOP on colour.

Sue begins by describing the colour wheel, the cool and warm components and how colours behave next to each other (e.g. red and green); I am now quite familiar with this having previously studied art and read the course materials and supplement.  An interesting feature of Sue's photography is the use of colour to achieve focal point; for instance in the photo on page 18 of a yellow kayak boat in a cool blue waterscape setting, although the boat is tiny, there is no doubt that it is the focal point of the photograph because of its warm dominant colour.  I also like Sue's use of a limited pallette to achieve a calming effect demonstrated by the image of the blue boat on page 23. 

Sue also describes how colour can be used to create abstract images, where colour is the subject of the photograph; this works particularly well with harmonised colours but can also work well with contrasting colours.  She also explains how to cope with dominant and receeding colours and how distracting elements can be toned down to avoid competition with the important elements in the photograph.  In addition, she refers to saturated and pastel hues, and how to use both to an advantage, and to be observant to reflected colours that might become the subject of a photograph.  She also makes the point about photographing small elements of subjects where the detail of the colour is interesting to create almost abstract pictures.

Finally she mentions white balance and polarizing filters (to enhance saturation and reduce glare), both of which I am already familiar with, although interestingly, I didn't realise that the camera adjusts for polarization automatically resulting in a slower shutter speed - which might explain a few mishaps!

In the light section of the book, Sue mentions describes the qualities of light and how to make the most of evening light and that side lighting generally makes the best conditions, but front lighting can be useful for flat but graphic images.

The section dealing with composition is informative; mostly in line with other reading on the matter, but interesting that Sue seems to use central composition more than other authors I've read.  I really like her simplistic approach to composition: her images have a pure quality, they are uncluttered and exhibit a striking use of colour and light.