Color Harmony
did you know that are influenced by color everyday. each color suggests something different to us. let's take for example a shopping trip to pick up some steaks for a cook out. have you ever thought about why the meat case is always lined with green astroturf? to give the "down on the farm" look, not really. actually astroturf comes in different colors. but... anything that is next to green appears more red. since fresh meat is pink to red then the green background makes it more appealing to the consumer, whereas that same t-bone could be displayed on purple astroturf and no one would buy it because it appeared yellow.
fast food places know that hot colors (red, orange & yellow) project. they make you anxious, you supersize yourself, eat fast and leave thus turning the table over for the next patron. if they served drinks, they would want you to relax and have one or two. this is no place for hot colors so then the choice would be pastels or earth tones.
okay let's apply this to our photography. let's say that we are going to make a group portrait. there are going to be four people in it. three show in either green or blue and the fourth in red (they didn't get the memo on how to dress). as i said above, hot colors project. cool colors on the other hand recede. if you lined them up in a straight line, the viewer's eye go straight to the red top. if you grouped them with the red top in the center front for color balance, the red would pop and the others would become a background. the solution is to place one cool color in front, two behind on the sides and finally the red directly behind. this would cut the amount of red in the image and what little is left would optically pull the others in cool colors forward.
all of this said, people prefer warm fuzzy things to cool prickly ones. try to arrange subjects in the same type, either all warm or all cool.
blue is the universal like me color. nice color to wear for a job interview or to make a bank loan. too much contrast in dress could make one appear a lot stiffer than they are. extreme case, you can make a tuff guy look like mr. nice by putting a sweater on him. honestly this done several years ago to a news anchor because his ratings were falling.
i once spoke at a grade school where the class room was painted orange. afterwards i asked the teacher if she had more problems with the children that room than others. the answer was yes but she didn't know why. think about it, how would your day start off if your bathroom was a bright orange. you wouldn't need caffeine. if your walls were light and the ceiling was painted black, you have back pain.
in photography, look beyond the elements of the composition and see what the colors are doing.
