Whether you’re a painter or a photographer, the first thing that comes to mind when you think about contrast is the difference between dark and light. In black and white photography, that means the stark differences between the dark values of your scene and the lighter ones. For color imagery, contrast can mean a couple of different things: the darkness or lightness between brightly lit or dimmer areas, or the contrast
between colors.
As you compose images, it’s important to think about contrast, not just in terms of dark and light, but in other ways, too. Color contrasts are one great way to add life to your images, and you don’t even need to resort to opposite ends of the color wheel (like red sandstone against green foliage) to add interest to your images. Colors that
are closely related, such as green and yellow or green and blue, can make beautiful contrasts. You can also use the contrasts between varying shades of the same colors to great effect — a new, bright green leaf against older, darker leaves, for instance.
But beyond light and dark and beyond the differences between colors, there are still more types of contrasts that you can work with. To use
the contrasts that I’m referring to, you’ll need to look deeper than the mechanical aspects of your art. Here are some examples of the contrasts that can make images meaningful...
