Nature Photography How To

It’s unfortunate so many photographer overlook color theory. That’s because whether you’re a beginner or an experienced pro, even a rudimentary understanding of this concept can make a huge difference in your images. Moreover, a bit of knowledge about how colors work together will change how you go about the image-editing process.

Color theory can be a simple or complicated as you make it, but the video below offers a quick basic primer that everyone can employ immediately to improve the quality of the their work. In just nine minutes you’ll gain a very good grasp of complimentary colors, color harmonies, and much more.

James Popsys is a British photographer specializing in travel, adventure, and landscape imagery, with an unusual knack for simplifying important techniques. And we’re pretty sure that after watching this tutorial your photos will never been the same.

Popsys kicks off this episode with a landscape image he shot in the Faroe Islands of Denmark. It’s a pretty nice shot with a predominantly green hue. He then employs a simple color wheel to identify the specific green tone in the image, and demonstrates how to quickly identify the complimentary color, which in this case is a reddish orange. A color wheel is inexpensive to purchase, or you can simply find one online and print out a paper version for free. 

Once you grasp the simple notion of complimentary colors, Popsys again uses the color wheel with a few other images to illustrate how he made the photographs with color harmonies in mind. As you’ll see, there are a number of colors that work well with the key tone in an image, but they are all tightly grouped on the color wheel.

Popsys goes into a bit more detail in this easy-to-understand primer, and the good news is once you get it you got it, and it doesn’t take long.

If you appreciate concise tutorials like this, head over to Popsys YouTube channel where you’ll find many more. And be sure to check out a video we posted last week, explaining how to shoot great landscape photos with a telephoto lens.