Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Contrasting Colors

The color wheel is one of the primary tools of anyone who works with graphics. It shows us which colors oppose or complement each other. Most of us know it instinctively, but a reminder can be useful.

Contrast generally means the mixing of colors that oppose each other on the color wheel. Of course they don’t have to directly oppose each other. While blue opposes orange, it contrasts just fine with yellow. Green versus red — Christmas colors — are so popular we probably don’t even think of them as contrasting.

This presented a particular challenge for me since I favor a monochrome palette, in my life and in my photography. I like gradations of color more than I like contrast, saving contrast for spot color.

The ultimate contrast is, of course, black and white, white being “all colors” and black being the absence of color. When we talk casually of contrast, we are really referring to any two colors, one light, one dark — a variation on a theme of black and white.

Categories: #Flowers, #Photography, Nature, snow

Tags: #Flowers, #Photography, black and white, Cee's Fun Foto Challenge, color wheel, colors, contrast, snow