While trying to come up with a color scheme for a new client’s web site I thought about the one difference between photographers and artist, certainly this photographer.
Given a palette of colors, I take some time picking good colors, especially those that will work as foreground and backgrounds on a web page. What does this have to do with photography? Well I found a good color combination looking at other color schemes on the net. As soon as I saw the site, I knew these were the colors.
Now painter needs to able to create colors as they work. One of their basic tasks is mixing selections of paints to produce the right colors to represent their view of the world. As a photographer, I have trouble visualizing how to achieve good colors from samples. I tend to spend time with trial and error testing hoping to achieve the desired result.
However, when I see a good color combination I know it. This I think represents one of the differences between photography and painting. Photography as we know it developed from the desire of an Englishman, Fox, to be able to produce images for his scientific papers. Fox had little skill in producing accurate drawings of objects. So, he started developing a photographic process where he could capture and make printed copies of images.
One of the skills, and joys of photography, is viewing the world through an imaginary viewfinder and recognizing the possibilities. This is the similar to the artist’s view of seeing beyond the obvious and being aware of all aspects of the world around us.
A real photographer is always mentally looking at the ever changing interplay of light and angles, looking to bring out those telling details in even the most familiar and mundane surroundings.
