Experimental Question:
How the colours of photos affect the viewers’ emotions?
Recipe:
For the experimental two, I found colours and lights have the huge influence on photos and would affect people’s noticing. Moreover, in the first experimental, the subjects people noticed in photos would cause their different emotions as well. Therefore, to combine these two experiments, I would like to do a further research on the influence of colours on photos.
I would like to use two types of colour tones, which are warm-toned and cold-toned and set up a questionnaire to reflect the answer by collecting the feedback from the respondents. The reason I use different colour tones but not use different filters is the colour tones are the easiest and the most obvious method to show the opposite types of colours. Meanwhile, people would have a more intuitive feeling by looking at the same theme with different colour tones.
Ingredients:
- camera
- Photoshop (to change the hue of photos)
Methods:
Step 1: Choose at least two themes and take two different types of the series of photos, which are warm-toned and cold-toned.
Group one theme: Land
Group two theme: Flowers
Group three theme: Wedding
Group four theme: Dessert
Step 2: Ask five responders some questions:
- What stands out in the image the most in each photo?
- In each group of photos, how do you feel for each one?
- Does the tone of a particular photograph change what we notice or pay attention to in the image?
- Do you think colours would affect the understanding of the same theme? Please give your reasons or take examples.
Step 3: Collect the answers and compare the feeling that cold-toned photos bring to people with the warm-toned photos.
Reflection:
(My mother is a wedding designer and we met in Singapore during the mid-term holiday because she had three weddings in Singapore. It is the inspiration the weddings gave me because people with different characteristics would like different types of weddings and the colour tones could reflect on people’s emotions. The photos in the following are what I took in these weddings.)
To let the respondents have a deeper thought, I used the first two easy questions as the guide so that lead to a deeper level of problems. Moreover, the first two questions are good evidence to reflect the previous two experiments as well, that is the items appear more frequently, the attention they would be attracted from people. Moreover, the subjects stand out in the image would affect people’s feeling directly, for instance, one of the respondent feels the grand power of nature in the first two photos because the land is the main subject.
The last two questions are the excellent responses for the question of the experimental three. The condition I set up was worked, which is warm-toned colour and cold-toned colour exactly affect people’s noticing, even have the influence on their understanding. From the response to the third question, ‘If the photograph is not in black and white, strong colour can attract people’s attention.’ This answer could reflect that colour definitely have the huge influence on photos and people’s noticing. All of the respondents clearly indicate that the changes of colours will affect their understandings and moods. In general, warm-toned colour always brings people a sense of relaxing, comfortable and joyous, however, the cold-toned colour would bring the opposite feelings which are dark, sadness and cool.
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