Color in photography – Color theory

Color is everywhere. We take them for granted. Sometimes we are stunned by them. Sometimes we are appalled by them. They are unavoidable. They are important for your photos. And they are even an important factor for black and white photography!

Color theory is relatively new in the world of photography, but in the world of art there has been centuries worth of research and thinking gone into the subject of color.

This is the first in a series of articles concerning color in photography. In this article I will be talking about basic color theory. If you want to use color actively as a compositional asset (or maybe as the subject itself), you need to know a little color theory, to avoid photographing color scenes that are regarded as unpleasing by most people.

Back in the days

of black and white film, photographers were able to extensively process their photos in the darkroom, which was a science and art in itself. Using various darkroom techniques, photographers were able to tweak their photos in many different ways, creating special effects and very different versions of the same photo. Come the color film, the post-processing skills and equipment needed to work with photos became highly specialized and only for a few.

Now in the digital age, the power is back with the people. Using tools like Apple Aperture, Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop etc, the possibilities of post-processing and color manipulation at your fingertips are unlimited.

But color in photography is not just about the power of digital post-processing tools. For many amateur photographers, color “is just there”. But colors have a great impact on how we perceive a photo. Colors in a scene might “just be there”, but colors can also be used as a compositional tool; creating balance, contrast, tension or harmony. Colors readily affect our emotions.

Three parameters to color

Color actually encompasses three parameters, or properties, which you might be familiar with from dabbling in Photoshop or other photo manipulation software: namely hue, saturation and brightness (HSB), that can all be measured.

Hue

Hue is what most people actually mean when they say “color”. We think of color as red, yellow, blue, green, orange etc, but in color theory this is called hue.

Primary hues
Color theory has existed for centuries in art. Numerous devices have been created to describe colors and relationships, among these the well-known color wheel.

While there are a multitude of distinct colors, most people are familiar with the notion of “primaries”; hues from which one can create all other hues. But there are actually two sets of primaries. The traditional primary colors are those of reflected light, known as painters’ primaries. These are the colors red, yellow and blue (RYB).

As a digital photographer (and also computer user), you might be familiar with a different set of primaries; red, green and blue (RGB). These are the primaries of transmitted light (which creates the colors on your monitor or in your digital camera).

Secondary hues
Each primary color has another color contrasting it. These are also called complementary colors and are green (complementary to red), violet (complementary to yellow) and orange (complementary to blue). Combining these colors in a photo may create harmony or tension. Red and green together creates complementary harmony, for example.

Saturation

Saturation, (also called chroma), defines variations in a hue’s strength or fullness. A fully saturated red is a pure red, not diluted or reduced. Less saturated hues look more grey, or “dirty”. Desaturation is a result of mixing the hue with black, white or grey, or it’s complementary hue.

There are few fully saturated hues in nature compared to the abundance of diluted or earthy hues. Photographers tend to favor pure hues because of their rareness. A bright blue flower in the midst of pale or muddy greenery creates impact in a photo.

Brightness

Brightness, (also called value), defines hues as light or dark. The range between light or dark differ greatly between hues. Yellow has a short range, from midtones to bright. Certainly, yellow does not exist below midtones, where it becomes a different color (ochre). Blue, on the other hand, contains the whole range, from deep dark to very bright. Green also has a large range, though not so large as blue, yet green is the hue to which the human eye is most sensitive. This means that we can differentiate a very large number of different green tones.

Brightness is the parameter that can be most easily adjusted by you as a photographer; by adjusting the exposure. Slight under-exposure creates more vivid colors in your photos.

Advancing and receding colors

Some colors, like red or yellow, appear to advance towards you. Others, like blue or green, are more receding. If you have a foreground element that is red, this will add to the feeling of depth in your photo.

On the image to the left, you will probably perceive the upper part as a red ball in front of a blue wall. The lower part, however, looks more like a red wall with a hole in it, revealing a blue background.

Yellow is not equally extreme in this regard, and is more dependent on its background. It is more advancing on a black background than on a white background.

Combining colors

How you should, or shouldn’t, combine colors is not an easy answer. It depends of course on what you want to achieve. Like all photographic rules, sometimes the right thing to do is to break them. There are no clear rules as such, but if you want to take pictures that are generally pleasing to look at, a little thought on color harmony is wise. Complementary harmony occurs when any color is combined with the color directly opposite it, such as red and green. There is also analogous harmony, which are a combination of colors that lie next to each other on the (12-part) color wheel, such as yellow-green, yellow and yellow-orange.

When combining colors, you should also pay heed to each color’s intensity. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe assigned a value to each color, and these are still valid today:
Yellow = 9
Orange = 8
Red = 6
Green = 6
Blue = 4
Violet = 3

This means that the optimal harmony between these colors is when you combine them in proportion to their intensity. As you can see, yellow is 50% more intense than red, and so when combined, red should be the dominant color. Scroll back up to the photo on the top by Stephen Heron. As you can see, he has done exactly this. Stephen has not combined the colors strictly according to Goethe’s values, but he has wisely taken their relative intensity into account and composed his image thereafter. After all; color harmony is not the only consideration!

On the photo to the right, the photographer has captured a beautiful scene with perfect complementary harmony. If you remember, orange and blue are complimentary colors (and if you don’t remember, scroll back up and look at the 12-part color wheel again).

Conclusion

Being aware of the effects of color, and using it conciously, can be a great tool in photography. Besides, it’s also fun using colors actively when you photograph. It’s a great exercise going out to shoot colors. Choose a specific color, and see how many scenes you find that will emphasize that color. This will greatly increase your color awareness.

Do you have photos that you feel use colors in a good way? We want to see them! Add a comment with a link to your photo(s) so that we may see and get some more inspiration.

Any questions or other comments are very welcome in the comments section. Please share your best color tips!

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1. Color in photography – The color of light