If color is your medium of choice in photography, then color theory should be one of the first things you learn. One of the most important factors to making great color photography is the use of strong color combinations. Sometimes you’ll look at a color photo that seems simple at first, but you can’t take your eyes off of it. Beautiful colors working together can do this. They balance a scene, add interest, and pull you into the feeling of the photo.
Newsletter
The concept of complementary colors refers to three pairs of colors that artists agree look good together and complement each other. They are based on the color wheel that arranges colors in such a way that the colors opposite each other represent the three pairs. They are red and cyan, green and magenta, and blue and yellow (figure #1). This doesn’t mean that other colors don’t work together very well, but it suggests that if you use complementary color themes in your work, the images will be visually compelling.
Figure #1
For example, the shocking yellow building housing a police station in Istanbul, Turkey (#1) looks great against the saturated blue sky. The contrast between the two colors is bold and powerful. I captured the same complements in the photo of blue butterfly on a yellow flower (#2), and the predominant colors in the Moroccan door are intensely saturated blue and yellow (#3). Each of these images is successful on other levels in addition to the color (such as graphic design, lighting, and composition), but it’s the color that gives these pictures their punch.
#1
All Photos © 2010, Jim Zuckerman, All Rights Reserved
Another pair of compliments that always makes a striking combination is green and magenta. This is easy to find when photographing flowers because so many species are pink, magenta, and fuchsia. The background green foliage offers the perfect environment. The foxglove flowers I found in Oregon (#4) are a perfect example. It doesn’t matter if the background is sharply defined or a soft blur, green and magenta will look good together in any circumstance. The wild rose (#5) from Glacier National Park in Montana offers the same contrast with green leaves. Notice in both these pictures that the lighting is soft and diffused. This is ideal for floral photography, and despite the mistaken impression by many photographers that bright direct sunlight is needed to bring out the rich colors in flowers, the truth is that it’s softly diffused lighting that makes the colors so beautiful.
A very different subject shows the same impact when green and magenta were juxtaposed with each other. Carnival in Venice (#6) offers an endless variety of outrageous colors in the costuming of the participants, and it’s always fun to find wild colors that clash and that have tremendous impact. Having said that, there’s nothing like complementary colors to draw attention to a subject.
If you are looking for an endless variety of colorful subjects to shoot, attend a car show. Street rods in particular are fantastic to photograph. Last July I went to the largest car show in North America and I was absolutely amazed at the dazzling display of color. It was held in Louisville, Kentucky, and there were 13,000 cars there and most of them were painted with outrageous colors. The backgrounds are not great, of course, because there were lots of people attending and there were distracting elements all over the place.
In the shot of three street rods (#7) with an architecture background (from Chicago), you can see an example of the third pair of complementary colors—red and cyan. I rarely see this combination in nature, but in fashion, cars, architecture, and even storefront windows you can sometimes find it. I made another composite photo with the 1959 Cadillac I shot in a museum (#8). The neon abstraction in the background was taken in O’Hare International Airport, Chicago, and I think the cyan color in the background was perfect to go with the saturated red paint job on the car. Notice how I combined two photographs where artificial lighting was used. Had I combined the indoor shot of the car with an exterior photo of something else, I wouldn’t have looked right. The lighting must match when you put images together.
I used the same color scheme when I asked a costumed model in Venice to stand in front of a house on Burano Island painted in cyan (#9).
5 Color Combinations to Look for in the Streets
This first one is pretty simple to understand and see. Find a colorful subject or element within a scene that is mostly monotone. Black, white, grey all work as monotone. You’re looking for there not to be much color at all in the rest of the photo so that one color really stands out.
Example:
In this photo, the little girl is wearing a bright red outfit. The only other real color in the large frame are the matching red wheels on her horse cart. The road is gray, the cars are mostly white, and her horse is white. This really makes the main subject pop out in the scene. If her surroundings were filled with different colors, the effect would much less.
2. Look for One Color Across Multiple Subjects/Elements
This is another simple one to understand and look for. Find multiple subjects or elements in a scene that are all the same color. Just like in the previous combination, having the rest of the scene be monotone helps the color and subjects stand out even more too.
This is harder to find because the odds you’ll find multiple subjects of the same color within a scene goes down. But it still happens all the time. One trick is when you see one color standing out, like in the first combination, look around to see if you can see anything else with the same color. You can even wait around to see if something comes together on its own, after spotting the first colored subject.
Examples:
#1
For the first example, we have two blue phones and a matching blue shirt of a man poking his head inside. The rest of the scene is white and light grey, while the man’s pants are black. So there’s no competing colors and the blue elements really stand out.
In this shot, I noticed this combo and scene from across the street. So I quickly walked up and shot the photo, trying to frame it so the crowded street wasn’t included or interfering with the scene. I also wanted the elements spaced apart as well as possible.
#2
In this second example, the scene is a little more complex, but still finds a color across three elements spaced apart in the scene. We have an orange chair to the left, a little boy’s orange bag in the middle and a little girl’s orange balloon to the right. Light and shadow helps brighten the orange colors and bring focus to them even more in this case too.
For this shot, I approached the scene a little differently than the first. For one, there was only the orange chair and boy’s bag when I first walked by. I liked how the light was hitting the color and creating shadow, but it was missing something.
So I waited a little while and then spotted the girl’s orange balloon coming from a block away. I got down low and as far back as possible, without getting hit by Istanbul traffic, and made the shot just as the girl and balloon entered the frame.
3. Look for Complementary Color Combinations
Now we’ll be getting into a little color theory. Complementary colors are colors that lie across from each other on the color wheel. This means they are opposite in color temperature. This opposition not only gives a strong contrast when next to each other, but can also bring balance to a scene or photograph.
A “warm” color (red/orange/yellow) will really stand out in front of a “cool” color (green/blue/violet), and vice versa. The “cool” also balances the “warm” creating a balanced feeling to look at. It’s why some color photos can be so pleasing to look at.
Examples:
I’ve found that blue/violet and orange/yellow are the most common complementary colors you’ll find together in the streets. Red and green aren’t as common, but you’ll notice it when you see it.
Many buildings are yellow or orange and blue is a commonly worn color for clothing. Plus you have the blue sky and the blue tint the sky casts on the streets. Walking around you should be able to find this complementary combo somewhere. Finding bright, saturated versions of these colors together is harder, but worth it when you do find them.
#1
In this example we have a yellow building, hallway, broom and skin tone from the man. And then we have blue pants, graffiti, and street. These are the only two colors you have across the scene so they all complement each other well.
#2
This example is very simple. You have a bright yellow bus and sign next to a man wearing a blue shirt. There’s really no other color in the photo, with yellow bus taking over most of the frame, so that small blue portion of the man stands out more than it normally would.
#3
Here you have red and green together, with a little blue too. The thing to notice in this example is her red hair against the green. Remembering to look for color in hair and skin tone is important too because it can make the person stand out even more and bring that pleasing balance. Colors are found in everything we see.
#4
Here we have a bright yellow phone booth on the yellow concrete in front of the blue sea and sky. You don’t have to focus on finding colorful people, sometimes finding colorful combinations of ordinary, inanimate subjects can make for an interesting photo. Photographer William Eggleston has an endless amount of fans from being able to do just that.
#5
In this photo we have 2 colors mixed in with some white. The man is wearing navy blue pants and vest which matches the navy blue POLIS stand, while the wall is painted yellow, which matches the man’s skin tone and cigarette filter. The white also mixes in well on the wall, his shirt, his cigarette and the stenciled “POLIS.” Since white isn’t a color, it doesn’t compete with the complementary colors. Instead, it helps them stand out even more.
#6
For the last complementary example, we bright yellow dominating across multiple elements, with some cooling blues mixed in. All those yellow balloons and the bright yellow shirt against the blue shirts, billboard and sky. Finding complementary colors across multiple subjects can add even more complexity and interest to the color combination.
