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Lorna Schildt
Color. When it comes to landscape photography, color has the power to both take a good image to great, or take that same image, and absolutely ruin it. Sometimes it is a very thin line to balance on, but absolute ruin can be avoided with a little knowledge of color theory. Color theory is a technique used primarily in the varying fields of the world of art and design, and plays a major role for creating effective color palettes for those particular fields. Color theory is an important component of delivering a message, or otherwise, just making a combination of colors look great together, simply put. Color theory is not something that is typically referred to when it comes to landscape photography, but it can have extremely useful application. If we consider color theory while in the act of creating landscape photographs, we can find guidance for how to approach and manage color for better looking images.
The core of color theory is the act of arranging color into harmonies, of which there are several types. These are most commonly known as analogous, monochromatic, complementary, split complementary, triadic, and quadratic. I have found analagous, complementary, split complementary and monochromatic to be the most useful when it comes to landscape photography as they tend to be more flexible and versatile than triadic or quadratic. Below is an explanation and example of each of these color harmonies.
Analagous - An analogous color harmony are a group of colors that lie directly adjacent to each other on the color wheel. This group of colors can have a limited spread of just 2 colors, or can spread further, along as much as half of the entire color wheel, although at this point or further, it will start to lose its identity as an analogous harmony.
Complementary - This color harmony is comprised of two colors that lie directly across from each other on the color wheel. The spread of color on either side can be increased to a degree to include more color on either end. A common complementary color scheme found in nature is that of a warm cool combination. Cool blue-ish tones mixed with warm orangey tones.
Split complementary - By taking two colors that lie directly adjacent to one of the colors in a complementary color harmony, you get a split complementary harmony. A more difficult harmony to utilize, but can be useful in certain situations.
Monochromatic - This is comprised of one color, with varying values, meaning varying degrees of brightness, or varying degrees of saturation. Most typically this color harmony is what a black and white image would be.
Triadic - Combining any three colors equally spaced from each other on the color wheel. This harmony is very similar to a split complementary and in the context of a landscape photograph, where a 'single' color in an image can often span over a slight range of that color, sometimes the color harmony identity in the image can be blurry.
Quadratic - Combining four colors that have a rectangular spatial relationship on the color wheel. This is often also referred to as a double complementary because it is the combination of two complementary color harmonies.
Diad - Combining two colors that are seperated by two hues of color along the color wheel constitutes a diadic color harmony. This harmony has some flexibility since it is difficult to quantify what exactly makes up a single hue of color'.
A single color can itself vary in two different ways. Brightness and Saturation. Differing amounts of brightness and saturation will create versions of a single color that exist between black and white. By looking at the three dimensional version of a color wheel(shown below, click to enlarge), we can see that the top represents variations in saturation, where the middle of the circle is completely white where there is no color saturation. At any point on the top if you begin to remove brightness, moving down on the Y-axis, the color becomes darker and eventually becomes black. The second image shows a typical color picker in photoshop, which represents taking a slice out of the pie for any particular hue. Left to right movement represents changes in saturation, where as up and down represents brightness. (A combination of these variations of a single color are what would make a monochromatic color harmony, as described previously.)
A technique I use often in regards to saturation is not punching the saturation overall of the entire object, but rather making targeted increases in saturation to specific areas of an object, usually in correspondence to light direction. For instance with the image to the right, of some clouds around Fitz Roy receiving direct sunrise light, rather than hitting the entire area of clouds and mountain receiving the light with a ton of brightness and saturation, it is instead done sparingly, and more targeted to different areas of the object. As a result this creates the illusion of everything being very saturated, but not overdone, and it also increases the depth and dimension of the objects.
Another example is in the second image to the right of Elowah Falls. Notice that the greens generally are darker and less saturated except in certain spots corresponding to the presence of light as opposed to just blasting all of the green foliage with brightness and saturation. Again this creates more depth and dimension, and is also used in shaping the light in the scene overall.
When making alterations to brightness and saturation with colors always keep an eye on the RGB histogram to ensure that you don't blow out a color channel. I do sometimes allow small amounts of a certain color to blow out for the effect, but letting a large area of color blow out is not a good idea.
When working with color harmonies and brightness and saturation of the colors in your scene, you want to pay attention to the dominant colors. These will be the main colors that comprise the harmony, and usually the colors of the primary subjects of the image. It works well to focus your efforts of increasing saturation and brightness to these objects/colors as that is where you want the attention of your viewer to go. As an example, the image to the left of the Kofa mountains, cholla cactus, and yellow flowers is utilizing an analogous color harmony from yellows to reddish orange colors. The scene also has green of the brush and small bits of blue sky in it, but these colors, which are not part of the analogous harmony, are intentionally left darker and less saturated. The real saturation and brightness is carefully applied to areas that are receiving more light and is utilized again to create more depth and dimension on those particular objects.
Yellow. This color is usually very vibrant in nature usually existing in the form of light, like in the brighter parts of the sky around the sun, or where direct light is hitting objects, and then also in certain types of flora. Yellow is usually a great color to hit with some brightness and saturation wherever it appears. I usually prefer to shift the color yellow in skies slightly more towards orange.
Orange. Similarly to yellow, appearing often in skies and in flora, it is also generally associated to objects in a scene that are very bright and thus can take more brightness and saturation. I usually try to avoid allowing colors in the orange range from becoming too dark and desaturated as it turns brown. This is especially important for skies, and I avoid it at all costs. It is just not a pleasing color to see in a sky.
Red. This color tends to appear as the most saturated on camera sensors and thus is very easy to blow out. Be careful of this. When red is present in skies, I pay extra attention in only applying saturation very selectively as described in the techniques above. Red in flora looks great when given an extra punch of saturation. Red also looks nice when it's darker, as you are out of the muddy brown color area.
Magenta. This color is powerful, and is a good color to use to create the illusion of a more colorful image overall. I see this overdone quite often, and I personally choose to use it in very subdued, darker, less saturated tones. It's a great way to get a blue sky to look a little more harmonious with warm/red clouds and light, and it is also a great color to use for night and twilight scenes. Just keep it more subdued. No Barney-purple skies. Repeat after me. No Barney-purple skies!
Blue. A tricky color that can be very difficult to reign in, especially in primarily blue skies. Pay extra attention to not allow variations of blue in blue skies, in other words, allowing the combination of teal-blues, blue-blues, and magenta-blues, unless on the magenta side, some colorful light otherwise exists and motivates the presence of magenta in the blues of the sky. I put extra care into making blue very consistent in blue skies that do not have edge of day color. Handle blue in water very carefully. It can look great when it's brightened and saturated, but I find it needs to be present in the first place to handle bringing it out further. Adding blue to water that is otherwise colorless can work well, but in very subdued levels.
Teal/Turqoise. A color that does not show up much in nature generally except in glacial/snow melt waters, or in seawater in certain parts of the world. In these scenarios it's a fantastically beautiful color and I always love to feature it in images when ever I come across it. I take extra care to not allow this color to show up in open sky as it is too much of a departure from the context of nature(discussed later).
Green. A color that is abundantly present in nature. I find greens usually look the best in analogous color harmonies such as in forest scenes or waterfall scenes where the greens can be mixed in with yellows, teals and blues. I tend to prefer a very slightly blue-ish green in forest scenes, and find that adding just a touch of blue to them can make them look really nice, as opposed to going with more of a yellow green. Yellow-ish greens tend to look a little more drab and sickly. Instead limit yellow greens to the highlights of green flora. Something I also take special care in avoiding is green in skies. This can happen in skies where the warmth of the color of the sun transitions to the blue in open sky. This can be avoided by shifting the warm colors more towards orange and the blues of the open sky slightly towards magenta.
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