Comments on colour

I'm finally getting ready to submit my OCA assignment three on colour after a long period of apparent inactivity. Colourblindness isn't something that's immediately obvious, indeed I didn't know I'd got it for many years and it hadn't really caused any problems that I was aware of.

Now this assignment has forced me to confront this issue and try to incorporate colour into my photography.

Back in the autumn, I had the opportunity to visit the Steve McCurry retrospective in Birmingham. I'd seen the 'Afghan girl' like everyone else, and a few other lesser known images of his, but this was a rare opportunity in the Midlands to see the work of a top photographer.

I knew his work was 'colourful', but its only now when I look at his blog (http://stevemccurry.wordpress.com/), that I've suddenly become aware of how he used colour as a compositional tool as well as to give balance and contrast in his images. On the face of it, living in a rural area where colours tend to be quite muted is a problem, but I think this is an advantage compared to a city where colourful objects are more plentiful and its perhaps less easy to make colours stand out.

This is definitely going to take effort on my part, but I think I may have just learned a new technique which I'll try to incorporate into my work.