Project: Colour Relationships

D200 12mm ISO100 f8 1/80th

As I said in the last post, photographing a single colour as the main compositional element of an image was not something that I had done before; using two or more colours as either the 'subject', or to support the composition of an image, is more familiar to me. 

Although I have never studied the relationships of colours to each other, I think, like most photographers, I am drawn to certain combinations of colours, that in one way or another 'go' with each other. The image to the right was taken a few years ago in New York. The 'yellow cab shot' was on my list of images, and I realised that yellow 'goes' with blue, so included both cabs and sky as colour elements of the image. 

Lee Frost (2007, p59), explains why the colour combination I selected works:  

When used creatively colour can lend great aesthetic power to your compositions simply because of the way people respond to it. If you fill the frame with bold, contrasting colours such as blue and yellow, or red and green, you'll immediately produce a picture that's exciting and dynamic to look at.

When I composed the shot, I knew that the wide angled lens would dramatically converge the verticals of the buildings, this would be a dynamic element. I wasn't so much aware of the way the colours would add even more power to the image.

When I read the course text and began to research the subject of colour relationships, it was apparent from the outset that the principles discussed were common to all forms of visual art - painting, photography, fashion, advertising, interior design. Some of the colour combinations are also found in nature.

Even clashing colours, ones that may be described as bad taste (to the viewer), have an influence on how that subject is viewed - possibly as harmonious, or maybe they are placed together to cause tension.

The colour circle can be used as an aid to identifying  complementary colours - those that, as a pair, balance each other. The complementary colours sit opposite each other on the colour wheel, e.g:

Red & Green

Blue & Orange

Yellow & Violet

Each set of complimentary colours contains a primary colour, then a secondary colour mixed from the two remaining primaries.

Another way of using colours together is referred to as harmony of similarity; again the colour wheel can assist - hues are selected from the same sector of the wheel. The similar colours go well together because they cause no conflict with each other (Freeman 2007, p120). 

Colour Proportions
The harmony found by using two complementary colours can be enhanced in a couple of ways. Webb (2010, p62) points out that the effect of using two such colours can be 'dulled or lost by introducing further colours or shapes to the composition'. Things get too busy.

A colour 'accent' can be used against a drab background - this can be particularly effective if red is used - as discussed earlier it is an 'advancing' colour and will stand out against a background, as a 'point'. The two images below have such 'points' of colour accent as integral parts of their composition, although I was not conscious of the reason behind their significance when they were taken:

D300s 22mm ISO200 f5 1/3rd

D200 135mm ISO100 f10 1/60th

The relative brightness of these accents is what makes them work.

The German poet J.W. von Goethe studied the harmony of colours and assigned values to the different hues, dependant on their relative brightness (Freeman 2007, p120):

Yellow   9

Orange  8

Red & Green   6

Blue      4

Violet    3

Using Goethe's scale for each of the complementary pairs, it can be seen that orange is twice as bright as blue, so the ideal proportions for their use in a single image would be 1:2

Red and green have the same brightness, so they can be assigned equal proportions - 1:1

Yellow is three times brighter than violet, so their proportions should be 1:3

This all seems to make sense..