Images 1 and 3 below, especially, read as illustrations to me, while image 2 acts as more of a bridge. As readers know, I tend towards quiet, observational photographs. There is a progression present moving outdoors-in, to a more intimate space.

Click through for more.

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Edward Hopper practiced deep color complentarity in his paintings, balancing cool and warm. I first noticed his use of red here, and it got me thinking:

‘Red is powerful. Hopper’s using it with purpose.‘

This got me thinking a little further: ‘How much red is too much?‘

One ‘painterly’ problem: Red attracts the eye quickly, and William Eggleston went boldly red where other man had, perhaps, gone before.

Henri Matisse went full red one time, but there’s much more: Expert lines, curves, and composition (no focal point) make me feel at home. In fact, I think this domestically-minded Frenchman’s put most of his life’s purpose into his painting.

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What’s the most aggressive, yet soothing, use of red I’ve seen consistently throughout my life?

Probably a Coke can, billboard, or truck. Check out this Arthur Meyerson photo with a Coke truck in context.

Another color problem: Color draws the eye quickly. Color is powerful. It snatches your eye and mind. The original black-and-white photographers thought color photography would distract, vulgarize, and commercialize; away from subject and composition, especially given the camera technology at the time.

Sacre bleu!

It turns out the old guys weren’t entirely wrong, as many advertisers and fashion photographers barf color all over the place. Some expertly upchuck. Others, alas, puke like Brits on holiday in Ibiza.

Kids with crayons and iPads, shock and awe pop-artist and portraitists, movie directors, and even ideologues making their propaganda, use color freely. We’re all being gradually exposed to the newer synthetic AI stuff coming down the pike. We are living, I believe, amidst an information revolution (storage, access, process and attention). I mean, unless you’re color blind, you see the world in color.

Remember that one sunset and her makeup and the city behind her all blended together?

On that note, Dear Reader, this has been one of the best approaches I’ve found so far along my later, more limited, photographic journey in life:

‘Beware of color theories. Theories in color photography are dangerous. The plain fact that there are so many of them proves my point. A color philosophy comes much closer to the truth. Beware of scientific color tests. They are as quickly outdated as a timetable. Their truth is short lived. Most theories are the result of an attempt to bring one’s practical experiences into a formula. There is no formula. There are only confirmations to formulas which one has already discovered oneself. I myself love to read theories without ever using them when working.‘

Hopefully, I’ve jarred something loose inside your head.

You do the rest.