Background Colour

[CreationBear]

Vicki-- very cool, and you can't argue with the results!

[kanutripr]

I probably should have mentioned I don't have the benefits of a wife to nag me to clean my mess up.



Vicki

[CreationBear]

Ah, that fateful phrase: "Well, it looks clean to me!"

[willowhead]

WOW!!!!! thass SOME rec. room

[kanutripr]

WOW!!!!! thass SOME rec. room

You mean 'wreck' room don't you?

I promised I would post some of my pseudo-scientific theories about light and colour and how they can be applied in photographing flies. Remember I am far from scholarly so take them with a grain of salt. Oh and please excuse the unsophisticated diagrams.

1. White light is composed of all colours of the spectrum. We see an object as blue because it absorbs all colours but blue and reflects that back to our eye.

2. Shiny flat surfaced objects deflect light in greater intensity and directly back. Softer, textured objects break the light up and reflect it back in different directions making it less intense.



3. Deeply coloured objects reflect a more intensely coloured light.

4. All colours are composed of three primary colours red, yellow, blue. Secondary colours are composed of the three primary colours. Yellow + blue = green, yellow + red = orange, blue + red = purple. Gray is a combination of all three primaries.

5. Colours opposite each other on the colour wheel are complementary colours (purple arrows). When viewed side by side they intensify each other but when blended together they create gray.



6. Colours that are similar blend and cancel each other (camouflage) Depending on the amount of light they don't even have to be the same colour just similar in tone.



How do we apply this to taking pictures of our flies and using blue as a background colour.


A blue background works because we don't tie many flies with blue in them (#6).

An intensely coloured, glossy blue background will reflect a lot more blue light back on your fly (#2, #3). A blue background will affect an orange fly the most because they are complementary (#5). If the fly is orange, a blue background will intensify the look of the orange but if a lot of intensely blue light is bounced back on the fly it will make the fly appear more gray. A grayer blue background will bounce back more colours from other parts of the spectrum because gray is comprised of all colours (#4). The problem with using strictly gray backgrounds is the colour gray relies greatly on the the exact proportions of the colours it is mixed from. It can have a lot of red or a lot of yellow so it is going to reflect back more light in those colours.


And remember

This applies in the most basic of terms, of course there are many shades of each colour and they are all reliant on the exact proportions of the colours in their make up.

The closer the background object is to your subject the more intensely the light will be reflected to it.

A lot of our household lights emit a light that is very yellow. It is a combination of the light colour, the background colour and the colour of the subject that will affect the final picture.


I hope these ideas make sense and actually help somebody.


Vicki

[willowhead]

WOW! who'd-a-thunk-it. We have the fly tying successor to Preston Jennings right here on this site. Way cool..... Vicki, if your not hip to who that is.....get a copy of Forgotten Flies if you can find one. You can learn all about him in there. His whole thing was light and color. All his fly designs were based on those principles. You really need that book anyway. It also covers Carrie Stevens (and your getting into streamers), Charles Defeo (and your into Salmon flies, and he was an artist, as you are), & Ray Bergman.....who mastered the winged wet fly.........which is something that will greatly benifit you in so many ways. The book is very expensive.....but, the price is only going up.....so, if you snooze, you looze. Trust me, i could of got it for it's orginal price of $95. As it went, i paid $225 i think it was. i doubt you can get it for less than $400 nowdays, unless maybe it's not in great shape. But i've never seen beat up copies for sale. Just tell Dave, your covered for the next 4 Christmases........and go ahead and cop. You'll LOVE it.

[kanutripr]

Sounds like one of those better to ask forgiveness things.



Vicki

[willowhead]

You dig??????

[Ruard]

Thanks Vicki very nice and clear explanation.

My background lays a role in the sphere of the fly and picture, but i also look for one where there is some contrast between the colors of the fly and the background. Because there is quite a distance between my fly and the background the reflected colour will not affect the colour of the fly.


Greeting