P#5 Q#4b: What Photography Techniques Can I Learn To Improve My Use Of Color?

Color and photography techniques

Rob Sheppard: Start looking around for that and usually you can find it. I'll often hear people say, "My area just doesn't have much color," or the big thing is it's wintertime in the north. I grew up in Minnesota, I know what that's like. People will say, "Oh you know, we just don't have any color."

Yeah, you do.

Actually, you can influence it but you have to look for it. As you start looking for it, then you look for ways to incorporate it in your picture by moving slightly one way or another.

Or you can use the focal length of your lens, because a lot of times people will use the focal length simply by getting more of the picture -- wide angle -- or less -- telephoto.

Yet if you use a telephoto lens and back up from your subject, you'll actually make your background get bigger so if you have a small area of color, you can increase its size. That can be an interesting thing to do.

Another thing you can do is you can look for things like dark areas. If you put black, like a dark shadow, or just very dark areas around a bright color, you can often make that color look brighter.

Or if you look for a bright area and put it around a really bright color, you can dull that color.

So there are things that you can do again by looking for colors that can be combined with your subject.

One of the things to always keep in mind about color is color is not an absolute. Color does not exist on its own. Color always exists in relation to other colors, and black and white and gray around it.

As other colors come into the picture or as you remove them from a picture, it affects the colors that end up in your pictures -- so think about that. Look at your picture, look at that LCD again and say, "Alright, are the colors there? Are they helping it or are they hurting my photograph? What can I do to use color to really bring out more in my photograph?"

In summary

These photography techniques help you look for color the same way you look at light, in both foreground and background. Experiment with focal lengths, the distance from your subject, and the contrasts between different colors.