Mountain Laurel - High Sierra - Color Theory

[maddogmurph]

Experiments with Analogous colors here.

If you've never explored color theory a wonderful way to do it is as follows: https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel/

Go to this website - and while you're editing an image see if the color scheme matches any of the "Color Rules"

As we all know - adjusting the white balance on our images can have dramatic effects - both positive and negative. We all typically try to push the color towards the "actual" color - however if you've ever shot at twilight, you'll know the actual color is black. And typically the shot comes out blue. That's why they call it the blue hour I guess, but my point is color is somewhat subjective. There is room for us to push colors towards what might have been.

In this photo, we're deep into summer in the High Sierras (Banner Peak for those of you who want to run out and shoot this exact spot - PM me for GPS). It's also golden hour. The color balance was strange to say the least. So I took an Analogous color scheme from the color wheel, and pushed each of the colors slightly towards analogous color harmony.

Did it work... you be the judge. For me the image wasn't particularly strong to begin with. But I've been toying with this concept for over a year now, slight success, mostly wasted hours trying to figure out when to use color theory, and how to best apply it since I can't exactly change the color of flowers when I'm out shooting.

Has anyone else studied color theory and have any references or ideologies published or available?

[Alskoj]

Color theory is new to me (now) but I really like your image!

[tom b]

I've painted for some twenty odd years. One of my friend Stephen Wilson's colour theory mantras is "hot, warm, cool, cold and neutral". Your photo has all those elements to make a great image.

Here's the rub… I can see that image as a poster on a travel agents wall, "Not that there's anything wrong with that".

Cheers,

[Paulo Bizarro]

It's a good photo, with even and balanced composition.

[KMRennie]

Lovely image
For more info on color design you could try
"Harald Mante
The Photograph
Composition and Color Design 2nd edition
Published by Rockynook
ISBN 978-1-937538-06-4"
Ken

[farbschlurf]

Hmm, interesting ... I now only little about (esthetic) color theory. Might be it's fitting those rules, but to be honest, I mostly see a strong magenta cast here ...

I guess probably it's not very easy, maybe impossible, to trim colors of a picture in post to match some rule, BUT if the colors more or less fit such a scheme originally (whatever this is, as you're right about subjectivity of colors) it'll be great. Here, for me, it looks rather unreal.

Have you tried to blend in the "normal" picture to a certain degree again? I found, in my own processing experiments that go over the top, often, it's great to partly go back to a less obvious manipulated version.