One of my final images in Color.

This course is required as part of the MFA-Photography degree …at least it was this semester!

I have heard from a program director that this course is undergoing revision so I can only discuss my experience in the Spring ‘10 section I took with professor Marc Ullom.

I learned a LOT in this class. I have never had any formal training in color and color theory and I now know why someone with red hair looks good in green from a technical perspective. I also found that I was creating images that I would have never attempted if I wasn’t studying color. I didn’t find this class hard, rather I seemed to be in a discovery mode in this class and every week was another mini-adventure in color and photography.   There are some difficult aspects.  If you had PH612: the Nature of Photography then you touched on plasticity.  In this course you will get some more face time with this difficult concept.  The modules in this class spend a lot of time discussing the exceptional work done by Johannes Itten on color theory.  After a few weeks into the semester I decided that instead of reading about what Itten wrote about I should be reading what Itten wrote and I bought Itten’s famous book “The Art of Color” so I could actually read directly from the master.

I was not disappointed.  If this is not yet a required book in future semesters you should get a copy of this book to supplement your reading.  It is a splendid book and a wonder to read, review, and reread.  It should be in every artists’ collection.  Sure, it is expensive but it is a fraction of the cost of tuition and you will likely find yourself going back and reading parts of this book over many years to come.

The other thing I found useful was a color wheel.  These are pretty cheap and found at most art stores and online.

I also found that using some online color wheels to be very useful in determining if images would well-fit with the weekly assignment.

http://colorschemedesigner.com/

http://ficml.org/jemimap/style/color/wheel.html

Marc Ullom is a great professor.  I had him last semester for PH 601: Photography-Concept and really enjoyed the feedback and encouragement I saw him give to me and other students.   He seemed even more attentive this semester and I greatly enjoyed his encouragement to play and experiment.  I worked to create some very abstract images for this class.  This was intended to push myself to do something completely new and it forced my attention on color and the relationships of color without having to bother with neither literal subjects nor narrative.  This was so interesting that I’m considering continuing with this for my thesis.