Setting a Challenge – Red

With digital cameras the colour red can be an issue. When you think of a Bayer, the four square matrix is made of you a green filtered pixel, a red filtered pixel, a blue filtered pixel and then one more green that is used to capture the luminance, information. That is why a 4 MP camera can be thought of as a 1 MP camera as only one pixel in four has the luminance information.

The red pixel though has an issue. The red filter is much darker, and lets in less light and thus is prone to underexpose. When shooting a scene with a lot of red the camera in software and the photographer tend to counter this with over exposure and often end up blowing the red channel. It looks fine on the little screen on the back of the camera but when you come to edit it there is no real detail in the red channel.

Photography for me is not my primary job, its mainly a hobby but I undertake professional commissions through the year. In order to keep things fresh I like to set a challenge every now and again.

As you can see from the lack of posts this year, my personal photography work has been pretty much at a standstill. So it was time for a challenge to get the creative juices flowing. What better then a challenge in Red!

I decided to work in a controlled environment so the location was my favourite local studio in Worksop, Nottinghamshire. I also picked one of my favourite amateur models who happens to have dramatic dyed red hair. Add to that a red background and lots of red fabric a bit of flash also pointing at the camera to try and produce a bit of artistic flare and I was on course for a shooting nightmare.

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