One of Chigaco-based professional photographer Paul Octavious’s many photo projects was to hold a small Pantone color-matching system postcard in front of his camera and take a random snapshot to try to match one of the hundreds of Pantone colors with real life city landscapes. Some of his photos from his Instagram series are below.
Pantone Inc. is the global authority of color used by industries, designers, and artists for standardized color reproduction. Inspired by the very talented Paul Octavious, I purchased my own set of 100 Pantone color cards earlier this year to set out and give it a try with my own camera. My Pantone project goal was to do a rural twist on it and do the exact opposite of city landscapes by using objects and landscapes found near my home in Idaho. Finding nearly exact color matches has been a lot harder than I thought it would be. I’ve got a whole new appreciation of color, and now look at all colors in a whole new light. The following photographs are what I’ve come up with so far and I’ll try to keep adding more later.
Idaho Pantone Project
Matching colors is hard. The colors seemed fine until they were uploaded to iPhoto. Below is one of my many reject photos.
Taisie Design 
Love this! Keep it going Leslie – so creative! A bike themed pantone project would be fun too.
Jenny, A bike themed Pantone project, great idea, so many beautiful bikes these days. Cycle Oregon is coming to Cambridge on Monday for an overnight stay in our football field, there will be 2000 colorful bikes. We’ll see how it goes, since I’ve signed up for lots of volunteer duties. FYI…I love your mailbox pics that you do…I always thought that it would be fun. Leslie
Leslie, Kim and I have made it to the Pacific and home after staying with you on our TransAm adventure. If I remember my color science correctly, the human eye is most sensitive to the color green. We can detect finer differences in green than in other colors. I am curious as to the evoluntionary reason for that. I wonder if you have noticed them same thing in your Idaho Pantone Project? I also like the idea of a bicycle pantone project. There are certainly many colors, expecially on jerseys in the wordl of bicyling. Visibility is paramount; no room for subtlty.
Mark, thanks for your comments and congrats on your finish at the Pacific! I thought about your comment regarding the color green. I added a new photo to the blog at the bottom. It’s a photo that seemed to match by my eye but the camera thought differently. Hmmm, maybe our eyes are more sensitive to green? Yes, the bicycle color project would be fun, unfortunately I missed my chance at Cycle Oregon since we were so busy volunteering. We won’t be seeing a lot of bicycles in Cambridge until next summer as the next batch of TransAm riders are heading east or west. Leslie