Colour Wheel

Colour is everywhere, but it's actually hard to find. It's important to understand certain colours and what people associate with them - especially in different locations and cultures. There is a grid of colours on the link and, usually, what they're associated with, such as anger as red and yellow as happiness. However, it's not strictly true as many people interpret colours very differently. For instance, the shade of pink makes me tend to think of new life and children, because it was the colour I painted my baby sister's room.

Everyone has their own opinion on colour, and this can change how you feel when you see certain colours.

Another way to 'read' colour differently is through cultures. To the right is an amazing poster of different colour meanings in different cultures.

For instance, the colour associated with cold is generally blue across the cultures in the poster, but the colours associated with mourning and loss in American cultures is black, but in Muslim cultures it's yellow, and in South American cultures it is purple. Another thing to notice is how in American, Japanese and Hindu cultures there are a range of colour associations, but in African and South American cultures there are limited colours. This could be for many reasons, such as poverty.

To get a basic knowledge of colours, I went out to the city and captured pictures of different colours - including proucts in stores such as Lush and Yankee Candle. There was a huge range of colours but some were harder to find than others. For instance, red and yellow were fairly easy to find, with postboxes, road signs and a few company logos. However, colours such as purple and blue were harder to find, with only really finding purple and blue coloured signs and products in stores.

I put these pictures into a colour wheel so you can see the colours I struggled more with and ones I got many pictures of. However, sometimes the lighting around the camera and the camera itself changed the colour of some of the objects I was capturing. For instance, some light blue colours were actually captured as really light and almost white - and this was probably due to the lighting.