PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNEY.com

As photographers, it’s easy to forget that painters have been doing this a lot longer than we have. And by “this” I mean making images.

But it’s always worth examining the techniques of master painters because some of what they do — arguably even a lot of what they do — is directly transferable to the medium of photography.

The beautiful painting I’m featuring here is the work of an outstanding Vietnamese painter named Dao Hai Phong. His paintings have a very unique and beautiful style and if you’d like to see more of you can check it out here. I highly recommend that you do.

Dao is known for his bold use of colors and it’s exactly that which prompts me to write about him here. I have written before about the power of using color in your photographs. And I don’t just mean shooting in color. I mean using color.

I could go off into a long elaboration about color theory here. And certainly there are many resources on the Web if you want to learn more about it. But the bottom line is that colors are like people. You meet one, and it’s sure to introduce you to another. And some get your attention before others.

Why is this important? Because in any photographic composition, just as in any painting, the human eye will be drawn to certain colors first. Take a look at Dao’s beautiful painting above. Where does your eye go first?

If you’re like most people, you probably are drawn to the red tree. Where next? The yellow grass between the buildings?

From a pure color theorist’s perspective, yellow is usually a more dominant color than red, but there is so much red here it overpowers the yellow a bit.

What comes next? Some might guess the green tree. But I would suggest that if you consider it carefully, you probably at least glanced at the blue before looking at the green tree. Why? You guessed it - blue is more dominant than green.

What’s particularly important here is that if you look at Dao’s composition carefully and imagine that is without color, you will notice that the two biggest objects - the two trees - are exactly dead center in the picture. Not usually the best composition. But it works here because of Dao’s powerful understanding of color theory. The colors actually lead your eyes in a sort of semicircle through the lower third of the frame - and back again. Wow. Now that’s a guy who really knows what he is doing. Very impressive.

I hope you find this helpful. Color is not merely a presence in our color images, it is like a magic magnet we can use to draw the viewers eyeballs exactly where we want them. And understanding which colors outrank other colors is the first key to doing this.

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