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The Viewfinder
I do not have an art background as so many in photography do. So, as I endeavor to grow my photographic art, and I try to consider color harmony (one of the 12 elements of our PPA photographic competition), I ask myself what is it and how do I apply it?
So I started doing a little sleuthing to find out the things I did not know. Like did you know that hue simply means color? You are probably thinking to yourself, Teri, did you not learn this in kindergarten? No, I didn’t go to kindergarten, but I didn’t learn it in first grade, or second grade, or third grade…you get the idea. I only recently came across this little nugget of information. But maybe there is someone else out there who is as clueless as I am, so I am going to be vulnerable and share my ignorance.
So in addition to learning that hue means color, I also learned that color value is the lightness or darkness of a color. The lightness of a color is referred to as a tint, and the darkness of a color is referred to as a shade.
And that is not all! If I add gray to the color, I reduce the intensity of that color. When I add gray to a color the result is a tone of the original color.
Okay, so now I know that hue equals color, that color value equals the lightness (tint) or darkness (shade) of a color and I found out that I can create tones of a color by adding gray. What else did I want to understand? Oh yeah, what is color harmony? Color harmony is using a pleasing color palette or color scheme in our photographs/art. I learned that there are six commonly used color schemes.
So there you have it! Color schemes that will help establish color harmony. I have found my little journey into the world of color theory helpful when planning for image creation. I hope you find the information useful as well!
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