12 Simple tips to improve your photography eye! Tip 4 Colour & Tone

Tip 4

Colour & Tone

Colour and tone greatly contributes to how you feel about a photograph.  We are all conditioned to connect a colour with an abundance of psychological and emotional meaning, and this can vary tremendously between cultural groups and individuals.  For example blues and greens create a colder feel, see example below 

 

Whereas if you look at this next photo which is simulaar to the one above I shot at a different time of day with warmer colours such as red it creates a very different feel.

The range of tonal values also effects a photograph.  Large dark areas are are associated with strength and mood.  Whereas images that are light suggest softness and space.

Try and use colour to help emphasize a subject.  For example the image below would not have worked if the little girls dress were in another colour.  Again simplicity makes more of a powerful photograph and that rule is applied to colour aswell. 

Next time : What is white space and why is it so magical?

12 Simple Tips to improve your photography EYE! Tip 3 The rule of thirds.

Tip 3

The Rule of Thirds

Photographs always tends to record too much information.  Therefore it is always good to select a simple main theme and then use some tricks to draw the eye towards your chosen subject. There are several ways to help you with this.  One as mentioned before is to use lines to encourage your eye into the photograph.  Colour and tone is also important we will come onto that next.  But there is a golden rule if you can imagine splitting your photograph with three lines across and two lines down as in example provided.   This provides a guide to where to place subjects or objects within a frame.

When shooting landscapes if you position the horizon a third or two thirds in the picture this creates balance.

Or if you place an image on one of the intersections where the thirds cross these tend to create strong images.

Next time colour and tone.