Great colours in dull condition

<p>One of the things that frustrate me with my street photography at the moment is how to get great colors in my photographs in incredibly dull weather. I will often take a photograph where I catch the moment and love the composition, but just hate how dull it looks. Post processing only seems to make the photograph look horribly digitally altered. It’s got to the point where I just haven’t shot for months now just looking out the window in the vain hope of some decent weather.<br>

Often I have been told that photography is about great light, so maybe I should just expect this to be the case, but then I see photographers like the guy below (see image 4) with the colors I am looking for seeming taken in dull weather . What am I doing wrong ?</p>

<p><a href="http://fotoura.com/2013/03/caspar-claasen-ispas-2013/">http://fotoura.com/2013/03/caspar-claasen-ispas-2013/</a></p>

<p>Helps to have subject matter with bold colors. Photo #2 (with the heron strolling through) is an example. That building would look colorful under any light.</p>

<p>Photo #4 has a single element of bold color - the kidlet on a bike - amid a low contrast/saturation misty scene. If it seems colorful overall it's mostly due to an effective use of illusion.</p>

<p>Beaches are tricky. I still can't figure out how Simon Jenkins managed to make hazy beach scenes so gorgeous. It wasn't simply cranking up the color. His photos look the way beaches look on hazy days - in the memory and imagination.</p>

<p>I don't shoot a lot of color but it's the same with black and white. Flat overcast days often make for flat pictures simply because the soft light reflecting back at us. Sure one can underexpose/overdevelop with film, but you give up some shadow detail in the process. On days where the light is just too flat and dull (which thankfully isn't very often here in sunny LA) I either work in my darkroom or I go visit a museum. There are plenty of ways to engage with photography that do not require the use of a camera.</p>

<p>Steve, work through it, man. Focus on something else, forget color and shoot B&W for awhile. Use shapes, texture, or street portraits instead of trying to do what isn't working for you. <em>"...the ass understands neither bridle nor bit..." </em>If it's raining everyday, then take pictures of people in the rain. It's better than:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I just haven’t shot for months now just looking out the window in the vain hope of some decent weather.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That sounds pretty miserable and unproductive to me.</p>

<p>I'm wondering how many shots did he take before getting the girl on the bike right. Jokes apart:</p>

<ul>

<li>Reduce the color palette</li>

<li>Separate background and foreground</li>

<li>Slide down primary colors in LR (especially yellow and red) and keep only secondary and tertiary colors</li>

</ul>

 

<p>Bruno, I understand the last one, but when you say reduce the color palette do you mean look for subjects without a wide range of color ? Not sure what you mean by separating foreground and background.</p>

<p>Two ideas I'd like to get across.</p>

<p>First, an overcast day isn't the same as dull. Sure there are days when you can't seem to squeeze any colour into anything, unless its grey blue. Worse, I could show you a couple of days -worth of photographs in the Pacific Northwest last spring which didn't actually need to be converted to b&w to look monochrome. There is just no colour around them. On the other hand I've had sunless days, especially after rain when the colours have been quite magnificent, and in locations like Scotland and Colorado I've been happy to work in overcast conditions and have got supremely saturated colour. The point here is that some overcast days are great for photography and others are not. You have to get out there enough to tell the difference, and if you look out of the window and you can't see direct sunlight, and that makes you reluctant to try, then you might well be missing something. Photography may indeed be about great light, but what constitutes great light is going to vary according to what you want to achieve and what your subject matter comprises. </p>

<p>Second, if you tailor what you look to do to the light you have to work with, you can get great photographs in "bad" weather. If its really miserable then close-ups and details may well perform for you when a wider vista won't. Sometimes when the light is monochromatic its misty too and full of atmosphere. Sometimes b&w will work though on others you'll realise that monochrome is mostly as demanding as colour. Sometimes a deliberately graphic, unatmospheric approach can work very well. I travel a lot to photograph. There are a few days when the weather keeps me indoors but they are few, and in reality I can't afford the costs of planes, hotels, rental cars etc if I'm just going to let days go by without photographing. "What can I do to make the best use of today" is a perpetual thought for me. Poor weather does get everybody down from time to time, but it doesn't stop you thinking about how to make the best of it. </p>

 

<p>In overcast conditions, the UV rays make their way in higher proportion than the rest of the spectrum, causing a low power black light effect on color. The key to color is seeing/understanding it.</p>

Hi,

 

Yes I mean choosing subjects with a reduced

color palette, also pay attention to how colors

interact with each other. Get "interaction of

color" from Josef Albers, make a trip to India

and another to Japan.

 

Separate BG and FG: the photo you mention works

because all the elements on the BG are tiny and

their color get dominated by the girl's pink

jacket.

 

b

<p>Boost the contrast/brightness in Photoshop and vibrancy settings. And as someone else mentioned look for strong bold colours.</p>

<p>This is something I have been thinking about during this long winter. I think color works better with strong light. After taking dismal outdoor color photos, I went to a museum and saw that they supplement the natural daylight skylight with daylight temperature lighting, maybe 5-6000k or more, giving a cool bright look to the white walled museum. I noticed it helps the paintings look more vibrant as well. Inside the museum my color shots were much more vibrant than the dull winter daylight gave me. I also downloaded the photographer`s ephemeris to help calculate light temperatures and angles of the sun at specific time on any given day during the month in any region. Its also an app for htc an iphone. I haven`t tried it yet to say wether its of any use, but its available. Just google.</p>

<p>Don't just mindlessly crank up vibrance and/or saturation. </p>

<p>First, nail the color balance to get rid of all or most of the prevailing blue cast, THEN crank up vib/sat.</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

<p>In Los Angeles we often have the opposite. Bright contrasty light. When I first started I had a hard time until I sort of learned how to use the shadows a bit. You have to learn to work with the light you have. Re-think what color "should" look like. Here's an interesting photographer in Scandanavia. <br>

Check him out.</p>

<p>Personally I prefer overcast days to make colours pop. I hate shooting in full sun, so I schedule shoots for early morning or late afternoon. Overcast days, I will shoot all day. YMMV.</p>

<p>I too like to boosting contrast rather than starting out with high contrast...</p>

<p>Depends on your definition of great colors.</p>

<p>Great colors don't have to equal bold or boosted colors. It can be about complementariness, color harmonies or discords, colors can appear pastel in more muted lighting, sometimes more nuanced and sophisticated. It can be a matter not of a color always standing out, just like it's not always a matter of a subject standing out. Sometimes the whole photo is the subject and sometimes the colors-taken-as-a-whole is the color feature that works.</p>

<p><a href="http://theredlist.fr/media/database/photography/history/street/joel-meyerowitz/013_joel-meyerowitz_theredlist.jpg">Meyerowitz</a></p>

<p><a href="http://www.vincentborrelli.com/vbb/images/items/400x20000/101174.jpg">Dijkstra</a></p>

<p> </p>

You could try a roll of slide film, or even fuji or kodak 400 print film. These will all

give you outstanding results, colors that pop, and natural looking results. Top

end film cameras are almost free nowadays. Of course you will need to find a

place that still does film, that is the tough part, but the great results are easy.

You could try a roll of slide film, or even fuji or kodak 400 print film. These will all

give you outstanding results, colors that pop, and natural looking results. Top

end film cameras are almost free nowadays. Of course you will need to find a

place that still does film, that is the tough part, but the great results are easy.

<p>Often the relevancy or impact of the subject matter trumps lighting and the vibrancy of colour and carries more of a message. Bruno's suggestion about the interaction of colours is also important, such as red-green, orange-blue and other chromatic contrasts or harmonies, even if we cannot always create a fairly spontaneous image that is optimised in that sense. As was said, overcast light is not always difficult. On the contrary, visual atmosphere like that of vegetation and trees after a rain shower can have very saturated colours, and semi-overcast days sometimes provide an interesting play of sunlit and dark areas that can add drama to an image, whether B&W or colour.</p>

<p>Only people who live in the north know what Steve is talking about lol. You shoot color and see that the whole image looks black and white with so much middle greys. I once thought my camera was set to monochrome. Anyway, on dull days its best to focus on composition and interesting juxtapositions , situations, people, shoot raw then decide, color or b&w. Anyway its what I figured out works for me.</p>

<p>I have to echo Fred's comment: not every photograph needs to be highly saturated to be beautiful, but it does seem the current trend ignores that. If you are consuming the majority of your imagery from online sources and magazines etc., then you will probably lean towards emulating it in your own work. But most commerical work serves several masters, the first of which is to be noticed (as in advertising). But there are other ways to go if you're doing your own work. It's a fact that if your ocular system is healthy you will perceive a vast array of light throughout the day - to ignore this beautiful diversity of pastels and muted hues is to really miss out. And anyway, color images that are made primarily for color's sake and little else (i.e. a bright red door isolated on a monochrome building etc...) are pretty hackneyed in my humble opinion...<br>

Matt<br>

<a href="http://www.pittsburghfilmphotographer.com/">http://www.pittsburghfilmphotographer.com/</a></p>

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Waiting for the N • San Francisco • ©2012 Brad Evans

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There are photo possibilities everywhere, even in flat light. There's a San Francisco neighborhood on the Pacific coast that is in full

overcast a good portion of the time, but have still managed to make many street photographs there. As always, it's a

matter of recognizing possibilities with respect to composition, gesture, potential narrative releasing ability, etc, and letting the

conditions and natural color come through to complete the mood and scene.