When I exhibit my work, I am often asked this question in one form or another: how do you get these colors in your photographs? I can’t help but to be a bit bemused by the question, especially when it comes the day after an epic island sunset that had sicko colors blazing across the entire sky, but have come to expect having to answer this question. I find it an odd question mainly because I see insane colors in nature all of the time. Granted, as a photographer, I likely pay closer attention to this than others, but still, there are many times where nature’s light is so dynamic that it forces you to stop and look, whether it be sunset light or a vibrant wildflower – do these folks not see this color?
For those of you who are color-deficient (not due to medical reasons), here are 3 easy ways to Enhance the Vividness reaching your eyeballs:
- 1) Take walks at sunrise or sunset.
- 2) Pay attention to your surroundings.
- 3) Purchase a pair of Maui Jim sunglasses!
- I’ve been wearing these glasses for 15 years and they truly make the world more beautiful! I don’t step outside without ‘em…unless it’s nighttime ;)
Now, I know that most of the people who ask me about the color in my photographs aren’t asking me because they don’t feel that it exists in the world, as much as it doesn’t exist in their photographs. This is what they’re essentially asking: Why don’t my photographs look like this? (In fact, I get that exact question too, and I generally respond by saying, You probably haven’t dedicated the past decade to photography.) So, if this is what people are essentially asking, then I wonder, why would you expect your photographs to look like this? If you haven’t awaken 104 times before sunrise to get out shooting in the past year, and if you haven’t missed 234 dinner-times to get out shooting in the past year, and if you haven’t fully dedicated yourself to trying to see and capture dynamic light and color, then why would you expect your photographs to look like this?
The reality is, the dynamic nature of the color in my photographs come from a number of elements. First of all, place and time of day. This is obviously the most important factor and it can be insulting when people overlook this and go straight to some comment like, So, are these colors all like photoshopped? I usually have a quick Woody Allen movie-like-moment in my head where I smack ‘em in the head and tell there 6 year old to get their goofball dad outta here before I clone-stamp his ass to oblivion. (Actually, I totally just made that up and have never thought that before, but you get the idea..) These type of people require you to have a thick-skin, that’s for sure! It comes from ignorance, and generally someone who wants an easy explanation of-a-thing – something that will fit nicely in a little box and get compartmentalized and then it’s off to the next thing to quickly solve. For those people – have fun with that. So when I say obviously, obviously I am not speaking about everyone. For the rest of you, place and time of day is the most important factor. You gotta have dynamic light and color in the foundation of your image, captured in-camera, to have a dynamic and vivid image in your final results. Or, at least – I do. After that, you’ve got your post-production, printing, finishing, lighting – all important elements to the color that people see in the work.
This week, I did a photography workshop here on Maui with a father and son from Washington State. They wanted to cover a number of things, but they were both curious and made multiple inquiries to my color in the days leading up to the workshop. I decided to take some of the mystery out of it and show them a few images from beginning to end. I am going to show you the same thing with this image from the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco that I captured during my last visit to California.
Here is the RAW file in Adobe Camera Raw, straight outta the camera. The colors are all in the foundation to the image. The way a digital camera records a scene, it leaves things a bit unfinished. Whereas a positive slide transparency like Fuji Velvia, properly exposed, is damn near a complete photograph outta camera, digital RAW capture is more like a negative and needs to be completed by the photographer.
Oh, and the back-story to the image – I was shooting here the night before for sunset when the fog moved in, so I felt optimistic about some ethereal sunrise possibilities. I stayed with a friend in South City 45 minutes away, and although we stayed up ’til 1am-or-later drinking beer and playing Wii bowling, I still managed to get my ass up at 4:30am and get back up here for sunrise…without coffee! Why on earth would I do such a thing? Because of Enhance the Vividness Rule #1 people…to get the color.
All I have done in ACR is brought the color temperature down a bit, making the image cooler. In so doing, the blues and pink become more blue and pink.
Here it is opened into Photoshop.
I open the image into Nik Colr Efex Pro and put a Contrast Color Range layer onto the image. This is a tool that I use quite often and like. You can achieve the same results on your own without the plugin, but it speeds things up and works very well.
Here, I apply a subtle curve to the upper part of the image and sky, just to bring those levels up some.
Finally, to add that little bit of punch, I add a little Vibrance and small-kine Saturation.
There, you get to see the path this image followed from out-of-camera to completion. Not a big stretch. The foundation has to hold the goods, otherwise you gotta get back out there and shoot it again. You don’t get good shots every time you go out, because there isn’t going to be dynamic light and color every time you go out, and then the 10 times you do get the sweet-light, 1/2 the time you’ll still not get the shot because of one reason or another. So, in reality, if you want to get dynamic color in your photographs, you’ve got to get out there a bunch and shoot lots. If you simply want to see vivid color, pay closer attention and get yourself some Maui Jim’s!
I decided on 
You’ll often find that when you approach the work this way, that you end up with a number of dynamic images that you like, making it more challenging to edit the work down to just one or two top images for a collection. This is a good problem! It is much better to have 6 strong images and have trouble narrowing it down to 1 or 2, than trying to pick an image to represent the place that falls short. Besides, you can still use the not-quite-collection-worthy images, I often call them “book shots”. They are good enough for showing in a book, but not quite strong enough to be a part of a limited edition collection. Your gallery collection should be your absolute strongest and tightly edited works.
