green

For this week's Austin Flickr meet-up I suggested we do something of a themed shoot. Got a load of bits of paper with colours written on them and then anyone that was game picked a colour at random. That's your new favourite colour for the next few hours - go shoot it! We decided that the 6 primary (for additive and subtractive) colours were a good starting point - red, green, blue, cyan, magenta and yellow. I picked green. First reaction (it always seems to be this reaction) oh, no, not green. Any other colour. Not green. I don't know why my brain always seems to rebel at these externally imposed, random constraints. It is never what I want. I looked out side, tons of vibrant reds, blues, cyans, magentas and yellows assaulted my eyes. No green, just bushes and grass. Boring. I want another colour. But I'd suggested this stupid assignment in the first place, I can't be the first person to quit! So I buckle down and start trying to shoot green. Then, as often happens, my eyes make that switch. I tune into the green theme. Green's are everywhere, all these green options to shoot. Why would anyone want to shoot any other colour, ever ? I'm still suffering the aftershocks this morning, seeing interesting green things to shoot all around. Maybe I'll always have that initial dislike of the random constraint. But it makes me think that element of randomness is important, otherwise I'll tend to pick something I'm comfortable with if I don't know what to shoot. I'm back reading the Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel - I think there's some great ideas in there that could be adapted to random photography games. Odd book. Interesing book.