Desaturation is a game changer in visual art. In painting we achieve this by adding compliments to the color (a dab of green to a red or a dab of orange to blue, etc). Realizing that neon color is not how we typically see the world will bring a warm familiarity to a person’s photography. Of course there r moments that require something outside of that box & artists who prefer to push the boundary, but on average, the typical diner photo or Christmas card or fall landscape/summer green grass could really gain from desaturated color. Instead, many, especially with modern digital tools marketing their hyper intensity in color & definition, will pump up the chroma. Color should never b gaudy. As well, we dont need every detail outlined with hard edges as made possible with HD power tools lol, but that’s another subject all together. Thank u for the content. U have turned me on to many wonderful photographers & taught me much about their history. Clear, to the point, & educational, always professional. The best to u & urs! 📸
Thanks so much for this. Found it very valuable. There is a really excellent (but out of print) book called 'Cartier Bresson: A Question of Colour' released as part of a London exhibition of the same name. It works on the premise that Cartier Bresson didn't believe colour could simplify the chaos of the world enough to have a bold message, and then presented photographers from the second half of the 20th century who tackled that challenge with success. It has everybody from Leiter to Haas (a personal favourite) and Gruyaert, but the guy that really seems to have cracked the Cartier Bresson style in colour is Alex Webb. This inspired me to attend a Magnum photos workshop with him last Summer, and he said that he only really shoots from the late afternoon onwards. This is very important! You can simplify colours by splitting them up with strong black shadows. You may not want that effect, but the time of day one shoots is particularly important in colour photography.
Another gem from Ted, thank you so much. You explained color theory so succinctly and focused on the examples and practical tools. I watched dozens of videos about color and none of them did a job remotely as good as yours. Brilliant as always!
Really have enjoyed going through your videos, they have been a tremendous help to me, but not only that they’re extremely interesting. One of my favourite channels by a long way. I think being a colour photographer in the 1950s, 60s and even early 70s would have been incredibly interesting, especially when you factor in the colours that were being used, the world was quite literally a very colourful place back then, and many complimentary colours were being used in cars, cafes, diners, and even household appliances. If only they knew what their art would become to future generations. Really appreciate your insight.
My favorite part of art is how we all see and understand it differently. It is always humbling seeing other peoples work and an amazing opportunity to grow and learn. Thank you for sharing their work and maybe you could include links to their websites in the post for further research.
I find this a really interesting aspect of colour composition; if we can see colour in terms of hue, saturation, brightness, then how different colours react differently to over or under exposure. Like, blue maintains its blueness for both; underexpose yellow and it turns to ochre, but gets brighter with brighter exposures whereas many colours get pastel..I have an interesting thing that someone might be interested in with colour theory. No doubt someone's mentioned this before but it's got to do with additive and subtractive colour mixing yielding different results: mostly we think of colour mixing in terms of pigment mixing, which being reflected light rather than source, is subtractive mixing: add enough colours and it tends to black. But light works differently and mixes differently: add enough and it tends to white. So why not in photography and colour composition be conscious of additive mixing, too? I saw a lovely still life of a cherry with its red fruit and green stem on a brown wooden background in a book I have: here the brown is the result of as-if pigment mixing - subtractive - of the red and green, and works perfectly in receding the background but amplifying the subject because of the relationship (while the subject itself has complimentary colours). But sometimes, if you can have a subject the colour of which is the result of additive mixing, per light mixing rather than pigment, you can treat the subject as if it is a source of light, amplified by the prominent other two colours its mixed from. So, to take the cherry example, with light, rather than red and green mixing to brown, they mix to yellow. So have a yellow subject. Another common example might be the green and blue of grass and sky: in light mixing, they mix to cyan. So say a female portrait outdoors, and you want her to really stand out colour-wise in a sympathetic way, have her dressed in a cyan dress.
Ted, really love to hear you talk about photography and how some of the great names looked at the world, your thoughts are helping me see the world in more detail and with better composition, thank you keep up the great work and inspiration.
Love these older videos. I've watching them and love the educational contect--not to say I don’t love the Zines, but I'm learning and love that you're educating.
I realize this is very old, but when you said the primary colors were red, green, and blue, I was taken aback. My mom, a lifelong painter with a fine arts degree always taught me the primary colors were red, yellow, and blue. Mixing red and green will not produce yellow, but mixing yellow and blue yields green, a secondary color. Later, I worked in a printshop and learned CYMK - cyan (process blue), yellow, magenta (process red), and 'K' for black. Later still, when I went into IT, I learned about RGB displays, but always assumed this was a technical limitation or approximation. Your video led me to look it up and I now find myself in the center of an interesting debate. Based on the cones in our eyes and the physics of color in light, the primary colors should be RGB, but in practice, 400+ years of artists mixing pigments proved the functional primary colors are RYB. Printers, choosing to use a "full color process" use CYMK which is very close to RYB. Unbeknownst to me, this has been a huge debate between physicist and artists going back to the early 20th century.
This is not so much a debate but different color reproduction models based on the medium and how the light interacts with the medium. Look up the difference between additive and subtractive color mixing. In essence, displays are an active light source, so your default state is black and then you ADD light in colors - hence additive rgb mixing. Paper and canvas are passive and white, so you SUBTRACT colors and lightness with RGY mixing.
It is a table tennis table not a ramp, and of course the images were conciously created. As my wonderful tutor said, “a photographer makes a photograph, everyone else takes a photograph.“ R.I.P Roger Hickman.
Yes. When I watched the video in which you asked for suggestions, I wondered about asking for potted versions of some parts of the syllabus you used to teach. We, the audience, would benefit enormously. I'm not sure how we can give back to you.
Very informative video. Just loved it. Was trying to get a bit more knowledge about color theory and this helped me a lot. Thanks Ted. Love your content.
Very nice. I happen to have a color vision defiency (a minor one, fortunately) so Kuler is really helpful to me. And yes, color would be a great subject for masterclass live, I'd love to hear you expand more on color theory, different color spaces, differences between print and digital in terms of color, and "deconstruct" some famous photographs like you did in this video.
The content you provide makes me a better photographer. That's what I've come to expect when I visit your channel, to find solid actionable information that helps me analyze what I'm doing and improves the way I shoot. Grazi.
I want to know why, in a technical explanation, mixing blue and yellow paints as primaries produces green paint, as a secondary. You did mention red (primary) and green (secondary) as opposites on the color wheel in the video: and also the mixing of red and yellow paint as primaries to produce the secondary orange. I suppose the people who manufacture the paints would know all about it
I thought the same. Artists teach the primaries as blue, yellow, red. Printers use the very similar cyan, yellow, magenta, black (CYMK). Apparently (news to me), physicists measuring light color frequencies decided the primary colors are red, green, blue, even though mixing red and green in practice yields gray. So, do we believe the experience of 400+ years of painters mixing pigments and modern day printers producing full color glossies, or do we believe 100 years of physicists who never mixed a color in their life?
Thank you for this! I really would like to learn how to be more intentional about color in my photography. I am also a student at CreativeLIVE and we've been talking about this in the chatroom this week at PhotoWeek2015. I've been thinking seriously for a long time about requesting a CreativeLIVE class on Color Theory For Photographers and I'm now thinking about recommending you to teach it.
There's a little app out there online called "KGamut" that works similarly to this. You can drop a pic into KGamut and it will show he color gamut of the picture. Very useful.
This will make viewing this video much more interesting. Each time he says, "You know", take a shot of your favorite adult beverage. Soon, you will not care what he is saying.
BR5499a I've done the same with comments. Every time someone says something stupid that adds nothing to the conversation, I have a drink. You're right - sooner or later you don't care!
+The Art of Photography I came to your channel because I really want to believe that photography is an art. I really do. I would say you pushed me further into the "it's bullshit" side.
+mickeynotmouse +BR5499a What? Hope this is not your view on things, that you take a look at. Calling something 'bullshit' is harsh in a strange way. Why would you consider that something is bad or good. The whole point of arts, of everything, is that it is totally subjective. It is like you are saying out loud nothing, because you are one of 80 million, and so am I. On the other hand would you back up your statement with some more handy facts, people can more relate to what your actual point is. I know this is maybe to long a text to elaborate a simple thought, but stating short-mindedness always irritates me. Art is a mirror to oneself. So you somehow got yourself naked. Really naked.
