How to Get Rich Colors in Your Photograph

Many photographers seek color and light rendition to produce vivid colors in their photographs.

Lighting, exposure values, and lens quality make a difference in the way a camera may render color. Professional photographer Ken Rockwell says 90 percent of vivid color in your photographs begins in the camera. To achieve those rich colors, a photographer must take into consideration the factors that contribute to significant color rendition, which is embedded in the image information.

Things You'll Need

• Film or SLR digital camera
• SLR Lenses

Instructions

1. Purchase high-quality lenses. Research how the glass represents color. Many camera-manufacturers have lenses for every price range and proficiency. Prime lenses, which are lenses with only one focal length (35mm, 50mm, 85mm) are crafted with high-quality glass which better represents color intensity and clarity. Standard camera-kit lenses don't have the same high-quality glass and don't represent color in the same manner. Higher quality glass usually is a substantial investment for the serious photographer.

2. Understand light-color and exposure. Light-color is the hue of natural light at certain times of day. Neutral light is closer to the morning into the afternoon while warmer colors are during the evening into sunset. Lighting and exposure are essential for brilliant color rendition. Determine the correct exposure by viewing the image on the LCD. An overexposed image is when the photograph is too bright. An image that is too dark -- or underexposed -- may suffer from too much contrast and make the color look over-saturated and dark.

3. Make an effort to search for places where there is dynamic color. Take notes on what time the light will have the most impact.

4. Capture glorious light, the light quality with the most impact. When shooting at dawn or dusk, the best light is the first and last few seconds of orange sunlight as the sun is rising or setting, Rockwell says. This typically occurs 15 minutes before or after sunrise or sunset. Plan to set up at least an hour before the calculated sunrise or sunset and be prepared to shoot at the appropriate time.

5. Review your camera settings to find options for JPEG and Raw. Select capture in Raw, or both if available. Shooting in Raw allows flexibility when post-processing the images within a photo-editor. The Raw file is the file's raw data without compression. This allows for a broader range of colors information and tonal range.

6. Set the parameters of your camera such as the saturation, contrast and white balance that will be attached to every image. Locate the parameters in your camera settings and use the plus sign to increase the parameters or the minus sign to decrease the parameters.

References

• Ken Rockwell; Color