Designing with color
creating depth, balance and magic
Color can make or break a shot. The use of color can add depth and movement to an image, and create balance. It can draw the eye into an image and lead it out again. 

One morning I got up and saw the sunlight shine through a bunch of gladioli in the living room. The beauty of their bright red, orange and yellow hues inspired me to make this photo collage

Using complementary colors can emphasize contrast, thereby extracting a subject from its background. 

Using repetition of the same color in an image helps create balance and continuity.

In the left image I enhanced the red color of the leaves and the green of the grass. Because of this stark contrast the eye is immediately drawn to the leaves in the foreground.

In the right image the focus is on the front branches. Their deep, bright red colors are repeated in the background, thereby creating a tranquil balance.

For the midweek challenge we were asked to make our colors 'pop' by post processing our images and experimenting with different hues and different amounts of saturation.

Here I took an image of a rose and boosted the colors three different ways. Top left is the original salmon colored rose, top right the toned down and softened version, bottom left the extravagantly color boosted version and bottom right has had a magical color shift: purple-pink petals and neon-blue leaves. Four totally different flowers!

While looking for a 'color pop' I stumbled upon the scene in the left image, where the late afternoon sunlight fell on this bright red goal post and literally made it pop out of the contrasting green grass. The mill and cows in the background make this a typical dutch image.

The second shot was taken a few days later, in completely different circumstances. The weather was damp and foggy and everything was grey. The guy in the orange suit was jumping upon the boat when i took the shot, literally popping out of the drab and desaturated background.

The effect of color is greatly influenced by the light. Soft or filtered light diffuses the brightness of the colors and evokes an atmosphere of tranquility and peacefulness. In these shots you can clearly see how the soft morning side light, filtered by the trees, makes this path in the woods look dreamy and a bit surreal. 

I experimented some more with color, light and reflections and made this study of a single magenta glass bottle, shot from different angles. I find the different impact of every single part of this collage utterly fascinating!