Contrast and Temperature in Color Photography

Although black and white photography has been the standard for beginning photography students for a long time, at some point every photographer should learn the basics about color photography. In order to learn color photography it requires a firm understanding of the basic elements of photography which can be broken down into the following easy to understand elements.

It Starts with Contrast

In black and white photography, contrast refers to the difference between the lightest and darkest elements of a photograph. In essence, you can think of contrast as “how white is white?” With black and white photography, there are really only three tones: low contrast, medium and high contrast but with color photography it gets a little more complicated. Color photography has color contrast compared to the tonal contrast of black and white.

Color contrast is determined by the way each of the colors interacts with the colors surrounding it. While the contrast can still be adjusted to push bright to dark ratio, the colors in a photograph appear different depending on what’s around them. For instance, think of a baseball sitting in bright green grass – that image has high color contrast because the bright white of the baseball will stand out against the cool green of the grass.

Color Temperature

Any time you’re taking pictures in colors, you have to pay attention to the temperature of the colors. Different lights will result in different color temperatures, in the same way that the sun looks different at different times of day. Although there are lots of technical measurements of color temperature the simplest way to think of it is in terms of tint.

Tint and color temperature are actually referred to as “white balance” in photography. Film and sensors are developed with a certain kind of light in mind, and any time photos are shot in different lighting circumstances it will affect whether or not white looks truly “white.” For example, if you take a picture underneath a fluorescent light is always has a green tint to it because that’s the color temperature of those lights.

"Peaceful" captured by Jim K. (Click Image to See More From Jim K.)

Using Temperature

Anytime you shoot, you want to understand which tint or color temperature is best for your picture. Reddish, warm tints such as those provided by a sunset are flattering to most human skin tones, while cooler, bluish tints are best for neutral product photography.

You can adjust your white balance several different ways- you can do it with your camera, by using filters, editing the image in the darkroom or by using photo editing software. Similar to aperture and shutter speed, it’s usually a good idea to take a photograph several times with different white balance settings to give yourself the most flexibility after the shoot is over.

Learning how to master colors is a skill that takes lots of practice. Designers often take several courses on color as part of their education, and there is no shortage of competing opinions on how color can be used best to achieve certain goals.

"Star's Rays" captured by Debra Vanderlaan (Click Image to See More From Debra Vanderlaan)

If you’re just starting off learning to use color, then your first goal is to accurately capture the image the way you see it. Once you can do this reliably with color photography, you can start working to manipulate these colors to add to the narrative of your photographs. And as usual, find what works works best for you and have fun doing it.

source : tutorialized.com