Lasoski

. : Neuf Carrés de couleur de Rubik : .

OK. So here is the story for my "WPC-2011 Colorful" picture.

If you've never been to Paducah, you may not realize that it happens to be home of the original AQS national quilt show, and is known as Quilt City USA and the Quilting Capitol of the country.

So my first thought was of the quilt my mom just recently made for me titled "Blocks and Cobblestones" for christmas 2009.

The reason I thought of using this for colorful was simple. Here in Louisville, Ky, there are really only two colors that matter:

Red and Blue

You are either on one side or the other. I happen to be a proud alumnus of the University of Louisville Cardinals. Which means I love everything




&

My mom gets it. And so she used different shades, hues, and patterns of red black and white to piece together the blocks for the top layer of my quilt. I really love the quilt. And the type of stitching that was used was really fancy. She had one of her good friends do the actual "quilting" (the fancy stitching done to bind the top layer, batting, and bottom layer together) which is not easy to do at all. But piecing together the top layer with all the different blocks is not an easy thing to do either. A quilt is actually a lot of work. And I really love the one that my mom has given me.

Overview of the whole quilt

Close up, showing some of the intricate quilting stitches

More close-up, trying to scrunch the quilt up to add interest via depth

More scrunching the quilt up, wider view

I flattened the quilt back out, but still didn't like the look

Tried to center the red and black at the forefront, still not satisfied with the picture

So I started looking around the house for other "colorful" things, still playing with new 35mm prime lens (tons o light! and dof!).

Maybe I could do CDs? I have almost every 311 cd they've released...could be cool; but it was not really quite as colorful as I wanted.

And that is when I found it. The RUBIK's CUBE!!! JACKPOT!

The blue was weirdly faded out here. I am not sure if that is because of light reflecting on the top or what.

What are the differences?

Cropped and rotated, and I really bumped up the saturation on the three primary colors. I had to "fix" the blue on the top, and used a transformed selection to do so. I left the hard lines to kind of show that the cube had been messed with rather than take careful time to make sure I was only altering the 9 individual squares. There is probably a much easier way to do this, but I got it done. It is good enough.

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The rubik's cube completed and rotated so that the 3 traditional art primary colors are showing (red, yellow, and blue)

So, after looking at the Rubik's Cube, I decided that the "solved" orientation was not very good in terms of creating an interesting "colorful" picture. So I moved some of the squares around so they formed a more colorful pattern.

Pre-processed shot of same

What are the differences?
Bumped up the saturation, messed with the levels to get white and black picked, might have messed with the contrast some. I also cropped this picture some.

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Cube rotated isometrically, with a point in front (so the edges form equivalent 120° angles, aka the mercedes-benz symbol) post-proc

Flat, isometric, white top, original

What are the differences?
Well, it's actually been a long time since I made these changes, but it looks like I picked the white squares to define my levels. I most likely bumped up my saturation and contrast, and obviously the picture has been rotated and cropped to appear more geometrically pleasing. I think I had to do something funny with the hue here, because if I remember right, all those changes made the orange squares look weird. I actually really like the way the colors look here, but I wanted to try to get the holder beneath to show the rubik's logo and I couldn't get everything I wanted into the shot. Also, when I started shooting this, I had seen Mrs. Rev's photo light box, and it was something that inspired me to play around with the background of my subject. I didn't have any black construction paper, but I did have a black blanket. Unfortunately it was fleece and I really don't like the way it shows up (you can really see a lot of dirt/lent in the original). I thought about reshooting all of these pictures using black construction paper and some sort of light box, but I quickly have learned that with these challenges once a week, if you spend too much time on any one challenge, you quickly get behind on all your challenges. The flash was used on the original here

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Flat Isometric, white squares on top Post-proc

And finally we come to the challenge entry. Although it isn't exactly what I wanted, I'm pretty happy with this entry for "colorful".

. : Neuf Carrés de couleur de Rubik : . Pre-processed

What are the differences?
Really turned up the contrast here to get rid of the black fleece blanket, and also bumped up the saturation. I can't remember if I tried to readjust the hues afterwards, b/c the red and orange are very close in color value here and they shouldn't be. Also croped this.

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. : Neuf Carrés de couleur de Rubik : . WPC 2011 week 4 --D. Lasoski

I like the finished product b/c I darkened the fleece blanket so much the cube appears to be basically floating. And with the aperture opened to f/2.8 the green cube furthest away from us is blurring into the black background. The biggest complaint I have here is that I had a lamp on in the room to the right and behind the shot a little bit, and you can see the reflection of that light on the black non-stickered part of the cube on the front right face. Also, I don't quite like the colors here as much as the previous picture. The red and orange here look very similar, especially on the top of the cube. As for the orientation of the colors, I really like the red and white facing forwards (cardinal colors), and one of my other favorite colors green is on top. And if you haven't noticed, blue has always been positioned to be either on the bottom or in the back. Like I said at the beginning, there are really only two colors that matter here in Louisville. Also of note, you can see the rubik's cube logo on the center white square shows the original orientation I had the cube when I started the shoot. If I had to do it again, I would rework this so that the logo is right side up with all the colors still in the same position. But that is being really anal, and I'm trying to get away from that with these photo challenges. Lesson learned.

These next two sets are series sets, highlighting the shallow depth of field that the 1.8 35mm has.

White front forward with red, blue, green, and orange squares showing, focus is behind both the holder and the cube.

Now focus moves to the cube

Finally, we focus on the holder in front. I believe I touched these up in picasa; warmify and saturate and may have adjusted the contrast, color balance, and brightness too.

Another depth of field series, this time the red pillow I have serves as the backdrop, and the red square is now on top, white still facing forward. Cube in focus first...

And now the holder is in focus

And of course, what photo blog of mine would be complete without a long exposure where I made the subject artistically blury? ;)

Those last pictures and maybe some of the others ones I would have liked to redo, this time with both yellow and white on the front, b/c the single white face forward shows all the colors except for yellow. This is one of the posts that originally caused much of my delay for these photo challenges. I really did later change the orientation and shoot some more shots. You'll have to wait another day to see if I ever go through them and put them somewhere online.

Labels: 311, Black, Cardinals, CDs, contrast, Go Cards, isometric, Louisville, mom, music, primary colors, quilt, Red, Red and Black, rivalry, Rubik's Cube, saturation, WPC 2011, WPC entry