Colors carry specific associations (see my discussion of this earlier in the chapter). For example, a scene made up of different shades of blue could appear cool, fresh, and calming.
Convey the idea of elegance in a photograph: A monochromatic design rarely seems tacky. It's clean and proves that less is more.
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Figure 6–4: Complementary colors create interest through contrast.
Figure 6–5: Use a monochromatic color scheme to create a sense of harmony.
Creating harmony With analogous colors
Using colors that reside next to each other on the color wheel (refer to Figure 6–1) creates an
Analogous color combinations are useful when you want flexibility with your message. You can work with all warm colors, all cool colors, or a mixture of the two depending on what area of the color wheel you're using. You can create a specific mood by allowing one color to be dominant, while including its neighboring colors to invite a gradual amount of color contrast that helps to liven your image. If you aren't looking for the drama of complementary colors, but you want some color variety, choose the analogous scheme.
In Figure 6–6,1 combined the analogous colors green, yellow, and cyan to create a cohesive story:
Cyan resides in the woman's dress and in the shadow areas of the tree. It works to create a sense of coldness or mystery.
Green works as a transition from cyan to yellow and exists on the lit areas of the tree.
Yellow provides a subtle contrast to the cyan because it has a warm and sunny feeling. The shadows in Figure 6–6 are uninviting, but the lit area is appealing and comforting.
If I had used the complementary scheme of a bluish-cyan in the shadows and orange (which is a combination of red and yellow) in the lit area, the message would be similar but the drama would be higher.
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Figure 6–6: The analogous color scheme helps create subtle transitions from one color to the next.
Any area with high contrast in an image acts as a point of interest. Whether the contrast is caused by a drastic change in tone or in color, it draws your eyes to it. As a result, you can show a viewer where to look in a photograph by positioning an element with a contrasting color in a specific area, like I did in Figure 6–7. The yellow raincoat in this image stands out a great deal in the otherwise blue and grey scene. In this example, your eyes are likely to fixate first on the yellow coat for a while, and then they'll be drawn back to it as you scan the rest of the frame. (Head to Chapter 10 for more on contrast.)
Figure 6–7: A single color that stands alone in a frame will draw a viewer's attention.
In Chapter 4,1 show you how to use lines and shapes to lead a viewer's eyes through a frame. You can do the same with color. You can use color as a leading element by positioning it throughout the frame in a way that gradually moves toward something of interest.
Figure 6–8 uses color as a leading element with the pink flowers, which draw your eyes toward the cyan church in the background. The flowers stand out as a contrasting color in this image and have the strongest visual presence. Because they lead toward the church window in the background, which has the most tonal contrast in the scene, the compositional strength is distributed between the two. The flowers catch your attention, and then they lead your eyes to another area of visual importance in the image.
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Figure 6–8: Color as a leading element.
Shooting for Black and White
Sometimes a scene contains no significant qualities with regard to color. If you see no reason to show an image in color or feel that the colors in a scene take away from your composition rather than adding to it, shoot the scene for black and white. Doing so eliminates your concern about color while still creating a photo that's full of life.
Your digital camera can shoot in black and white mode, but usually you don't need that mode. Shooting in color and converting your image to black and white during postproduction provides the best results.
Converting your images to black and white is easier than ever, and I explain a few ways to do so in this section. However, to understand how color converts to black and white, you first need to understand how your digital sensor captures an image.
Being aWare of how your digital sensor sees light
A digital camera uses an array of millions of tiny pixels to produce images. Tiny wells distributed throughout the surface of your camera's digital sensor receive light when you take a photograph, and each well represents a tiny portion of the entire image. A single well can't determine the difference between red, green, and blue light; it simply receives light and measures its intensity as a whole.
In order for a digital camera to record color information, filters over each well allow one specific wavelength of light to enter. Some wells receive red light, some green, and some blue (see the earlier section 'Discovering Color Basics' for more on these primary additive colors). These wells are distributed evenly throughout the space of the sensor and determine how much of each color of light a photo records.
When you take a photograph with your digital camera, you're actually recording three separate images, called
The red channel allows more red light (and less green or blue light) into an image. The result is darker skies and brighter tones in people's skin.
The green channel also produces darker skies but not as dark as the red channel. Photographers use the green channel primarily to brighten green areas in an image, such as grass and trees.
The blue channel produces bright skies in comparison to trees and skin tones. This channel shows the most flaws in a person's skin. If you want to accentuate the wrinkles and texture of someone's
