The Rainbow Color Photography Project

Rainbow umbrella. Hong Kong, 2013. Kodak Portra 400 film (35mm)

Dear friend,

A fun epiphany I had in photography: SHOOT MORE COLOR to thrive more in your photography!

Color puts a smile on my face! :)

So I recently did something fun in WordPress.org (on this blog): I started to search some old “tags” of colors in my “Media Library”. For example, I searched the words Yellow, Blue, Red, Red-Green, etc. I then ended up re-discovering all these wonderful colors I photographed in the past, categorized by each color. This gave me a HUGE rush of joy– just seeing all of these different colors arranged nicely stimulated my eyes, and my artistic juices.

The rainbow project, described.

(Some) of the wide-range of Chroma/Colors visible to the human eye.

Therefore I had this little idea for a photography project: it is the “rainbow” project.

The basic concept is this:

In your photography, seek to document and photograph ALL the colors of the rainbow (ROYGBIV: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet and every hue~). You can do this in different ways. First of all, over a long period of time, you can just keep shooting colorful stuff you have (then categorize the colors afterwards), or you can purposefully give yourself a ‘creative constraint‘ of only shooting a certain color in a certain day. For example, for a certain day, ONLY shoot the color red. Or another day, ONLY shoot the color blue. This will help stimulate your eyes to better see certain colors. For further learning on how to see more as a photographer, pick up a copy of my book, “HOW TO SEE: Visual Guide to Composition, Color, & Editing in Photography“.
Or, you can look back at your old media library of all of your photos, and then spend a few hours categorizing all of the different colors you’ve already photographed. Then ask yourself, “What colors do I like the best?” I have found for myself, I am really drawn to the color red– and the color itself re-evokes passion, energy, and a zest for living!