Since you're just learning about color adjustments we're going to do an experimental project where the end result relies less on craftsmanship and content and more on your willingness to do a whole bunch of playing.
Let's first talk about some artists who do surprising things with color--whose work relies on color as concept.
Olafur Eliasson is a master of color and light and helps the common viewer understand how our eyes perceive color.
A Film Is a Film Is a Film - Eva von Schweinitz damages and destroys film that she later enlarges.
James Welling uses colored light to make photograms and obscurely colored images.
Michael Flomen paints with light using nature as his paintbrush and light sensitive paper as his canvas.
Niko Luoma looks at the relationship between forms and patterns with colorful photograms.
Richard Caldicott uses everyday objects to create colorful, formal photograms.
Bill Armstrong uses various focusing techniques and color fields to create his photo abstractions.
Manuel Geerinck is hard to pin down. He uses a lot of different media to make his colorful photograms.
Gerald Slota chops and cuts and pastes his negatives together for some dramatic effects.
STEP 1: Using a black and white negative, make a black and white photograph on color paper. Shoot photographs that you find appealing, but focus on lighting and how light hits any objects in your image. Shoot these images with black and white film. Remember that the slower the ISO, the sharper the image will be as you enlarge it onto your color paper.
STEP 2: Make a photograph without using a negative (photogram). Consider the multitude of things that allow light to pass through or around them. The background of this slide is making use of flowers, but you could use thin fabric, fruit, prisms, and a million other things--together or apart. The translucency and the color of your objects will be important to the resulting image. Also, you could photogram on top of an image or let an image show through your photogram. The possibilities are endless!
STEP 3: Using black and white or color film that has been intentionally destroyed, damaged, or repurposed, make a photograph. The resulting image should be on color paper, but you're welcome to use any techniques or film types to get the image. Consider what would happen if you dyed, bleached, burned, painted on, or adhered things to your film and printed it. Or imagine if you shot photographs, then you took them into the black darkroom and placed objects on them before you hit them with light and then you printed them! Wear your film around for a day. Give your film to a friend to damage. Put your film in the washer. Put it on your car tire for a day. Hang the film out during a storm. Again, the possibilities are endless.
The more you shoot, the more negatives you'll have to work with and the better you'll get at determining the results you might get from a particular effect, so take as much film as you need.
Remember that while the black and white film can be processed here, the color film needs to be processed out. I recommend Fisk Camera Shop for processing. Wherever you get the film processed, ask for "process only" so they don't charge you to print images--we'll do that in class.
Credits:
Created with images by davisco - "Blorange" • sydney Rae - "untitled image"