Thinking about favourite colours

click photo to enlarge
As far as colours go I'm a fairly stereotypical person. When I was a child I preferred a strong blue - royal blue in my case - and this is the colour that most boys name as their favourite. As I grew older my allegiance changed to green, the second most favoured colour amongst boys and men, and one that remains so until they get into their fifties (blue remains top for life!) At that point, in most surveys, green drops off the radar to be replaced by purple. It's here where I step out of the mainstream, because I have a deep dislike of purple, the colour that is usually cited as the third favourite colour for men between the ages of 20 and 50.

As far as disliked colours go, I partially agree with the colour surveys of men - orange and purple would be top of my list of loathed colours, whereas they are usually second and third, after the reviled brown, a colour I am not especially averse to. In my boyhood I always named pink as my least favourite colour (perhaps for its "girly" associations), followed by purple. I had a particular dislike of both of these when they were partnered with yellow. Nowadays my feelings against pink are not as strong (though I am still anti-purple), and I particularly like it next to shades of blue/green. I even find myself seeing some admirable qualities in pink next to yellow, overcoming my "raspberry ripple" associations, though only when they are represented by subtle hues, as in the example above.

I took these carnations out of separate vases and placed them together for a photograph. If I can rid my mind of the thoughts of weddings, Valentines, Mothers' Day, and romantic novels (!) that the image conjures up, I can find qualities to admire in this pairing that would have been completely lost on me in my younger years, so clearly my tastes are changing. Perhaps though, choosing flowers to test ones liking for colours and colour combinations is cheating, because it has been wisely said that as far as colour goes, flowers never clash!

photograph & text (c) T.Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 1/20 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off