Photo Explorations

During my foundation year at Emily Carr, I took the most amazing colour theory course. It truly changed my life - yes, colour has that ability! We spent hours mixing up oil paints to study the different hues, saturations and values of colour. How do colours work together, what happens when they don't? The most valuable thing I learned from those days was how to experiment. Whenever we learned a new theory, we were required to do "explorations". The great thing about explorations was that they were a.) small b.) non-intimidating c.) quick. It was surprising to see how something so simple could end up being so beautiful.

Lately I've been thinking about these exercises a lot and how I can start to get into that practice again. Mostly the exercise encourages me to play with different materials, patterns, textures and colours - to see shapes, forms rather than subject. The visual language is so much fun. Since I'm not really set up to mix oil paints, I thought I would translate this exercise to photography. Taking an hour out of my Saturday afternoon, I searched for colours and patterns out of everyday objects and used the available light and the camera frame to come up with something creative. Hope you enjoy some of my favourites...