Colors in Digital Photography

Color: The appearance of objects or light sources described in terms of the individual's perception of them, involving hue, lightness, and saturation for objects and hue, brightness, and saturation for light sources.

The photos in this post were taking by me at the 2011 Wynwood Art Fair.

Color relies on our interpretation of them. In both photography and painting the qualities of any given color rely on the light source.

Natural Light in Color Photography
At different times of the day, different shades of the color spectrum dominate natural light.
For instance, at midday, the blue portion of the color spectrum is dominant. Color photography taken at midday produces the clearest, sharpest pictures in bright light.

In contrast, natural light at sunrise and sunset emphasizes the red portion of the color spectrum. Known as warm light in photography, sunrise and sunset light produces warmer pictures with a softer contrast.

Indoor lights typically give off a yellow hue; fluorescent and natural lighting tends to be more blue.

Color temperature is a term used to describe the relative hue of a specific light source. Every light source will emit a particular hue of color.  Normal daylight also known as white light, is generally considered to be around 5000 Kelvin. Your average household light bulb, however, emits more of an orange color, around the 2500 Kelvin mark, and a cloudy day can increase the color temperature to anywhere from about 7000 Kelvin up to 10,000 Kelvin, resulting in a blue coloring.

In digital photography, color temperature is sometimes used interchangeably with white balance, which allow a remapping of color values to simulate variations in ambient color temperature. 

“A Picture of many colors proclaims images of many Thoughts.”

Hue: The property of colors by which they are seen as ranging from red through orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, as determined by the dominant wavelength of the light.

Brightness: The location of a visual perception along a continuum from black to white

Saturation: The vividness of a color's hue. Saturation measures the degree to which a color differs from a gray of the same darkness or lightness.

Warmer colors are more intense than cooler colors, and they tend to appear to advance toward us, while cooler colors appear to recede.

“Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.” Pablo Picasso

“We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.” Maya Angelou

“There are not more than five primary colors (blue, yellow, red, white, and black), yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever been seen”

"Coloring does not depend on where the colors are put, but on where the lights and darks are put, and all depends on form and outline, on where that is put." William Blake

Synonyms: hue, tint, tinge, dye, complexion, shade, tincture, cast, livery, coloration, glow, flush; tone, key., pure color, positive color, primary color, primitive color, complementary color; three primaries; spectrum, chromatic dispersion; broken color, secondary color, tertiary color., local color, coloring, keeping, tone, value, chromatics, spectrum analysis, spectroscopy; chromatism, chromatography, chromatology; prism, spectroscope., pigment, coloring matter, paint, dye, wash, distemper, stain; medium; mordant; oil paint, painting

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