Course Highlights


Photography Course: Creating Balance or Highlights

The process of creating color symmetry or highlights within a photograph is a great way to add an interesting element to your photograph. As mentioned earlier, colors such as red, orange and yellow are considered warm colors where purples and blues would be considered cool colors. Therefore if you are trying to create a feeling of coolness in your photography you should find areas that have substantial blue influence. However, it is also important to note that a photography which is 50% warm colors and 50% cool colors will seem neither cold nor warm. The opposing forces will balance each other out and the photograph will appear neutral. However, if you had a photograph and it was 90% cool and 10% warm it would be called creating a cool photography with warm highlights. Often viewers find these pictures with added cool or warm highlights very appealing to the eye.

The following photograph is great because it limits the number of colors in the photography to a handful with only two colors making up the majority of the shot (orange and blue). Because of the color simplicity of the shot, it's very easy for the human eye to look at. However, notice that the warm colors take up about 50% of the space and the cool colors take up the other 50% of the space. The result is that the picture looks neither cool nor warm.

color balance

Now let's look at another example using a photograph which used predominantly cool colors with a smaller percentage of warm colors creating what we now is a highlighted look.

color highlight

Other photography articles of interest

Photography color psychology
Photography color balance and highlighting
Photography composition
Photography composition: Line
Photography composition: Shape

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