Colour contrasts work in many ways

When people talk about colour contrasts they usually think of contrasting one colour with another, maybe its complementary colour, or one on the opposite side of the colour wheel. But there are other ways to create colour contrasts, sometimes even stronger than this – and one of my favourites is ‘colour vs no colour’.

This sign on the side of a helicopter consists of just red and white, but the contrast between the red and the white is very strong and makes the red colour especially vibrant. In fact there are two types of contrast going on here. The first is the contrast in brightness between the red and the white. The second is the contrast in saturation – the red is very saturated, while the white areas have zero colour saturation.

Most people think of colour in terms of hue, so that you can contrast blue with yellow, for example, because they are almost opposite on the colour wheel.

Instead, though, think of colour in terms of Hue, Saturation and Lightness (HSL), a colour mode found in most photo editors, and a way to appreciate colour contrasts in a wider way. You can have contrasting hues, to be sure, but you can also have contrasting lightness and saturation values, and its the contrast in lightness and saturation that really makes the red ‘pop’ in this photo.

It also shows that you can create very striking colour images with just one colour. In fact, these can often be the most powerful. You can celebrate colours in photography without capturing ‘all the colours’. The more colours there are in your photo, the more potential there is, perhaps, for great colour contrasts, but it can be hard to handle all these hues and you may just end up with a confusion of competing colours without any real cohesion or impact.