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Red in Digital Color Photography
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Digital Photography
Composition #18 - 5 August 2009 |
Calhoun County, Michigan, has a park full of restored, colorful bridges. The bright, saturated colors of the bridges got me thinking about ways to make the most of color in photography. Usually, we pursue a subject and expose our images so that the colors show the subject to best advantage.
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But, we can turn that around. We can choose 'red' to be the subject of our image, then look for a subject that gives the color contrast and depth against a complementary background. This puts a new perspective on digital color photography.
The blue water fountain and orange gazinia presented opportunities to treat color as the subject, but neither composition was as effective as this one because the subjects are too recognizable. As with this one, I would have need to get closer. Instead, those represent a middle ground where strong, saturated color is important to make the image interesting.
Photo Critique
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This image succeeds at making 'red' the subject because the color dominates the image, both in the well-saturated foreground and in the shadows at left. And, while you may recognize the object as structural iron, you cannot say whether it is part of a bridge (which it is) or of some piece of machinery (which it is not). The image follows the mantra of 'get close' as a way to obscure the nature of the object. Look below at the difference in impact of the color when the whole bridge is included.
While red is strong in this composition, it is only an important modifier of the true subject, the bridge - in this case, a red bridge. |
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Red is the most challenging of colors to photograph, easily overexposed when the rest of the image is well-exposed. With digital color photography, we are able to correct the overexposure when editing the image, provided that the red is not fully burned out. This image (top of page) was shot in bright, mid-day sun on a very clear day, making the reds very intense. The exposure was not blown, which enabled a slight contrast adjustment to pick up the subtle details in the brightest red areas. |
