Cool, With an Accent

...I meant to mention yesterday that the "Girl in Red" autochrome from 1913 is a good example of "cool with a warm accent," which is one of maybe a dozen or so basic, baseline strategies for making a picture appeal to people.

Curiously, it doesn't work the other way around—"warm with a cool accent" might work or might not, but doesn't necessarily have any intrinsic appeal.

The appeal seems to come from somewhere deep in our brains. Perhaps it's due to some deep species memory that hearkens back to 50,000 years of human existence during which the sight of a campfire in the deepening gloom of dusk was one of the most welcome sights any homo sapiens could see. Whatever the reason for it, 'tis a strategy that works well. Something to be aware of if you're not already.

Mike

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Carsten Bockermann: "That's probably why National Geographic at some point become known for what is called The Red Shirt School of Photography."

Alan Carmody: "It pleases me that Christina Bevan did not have a smartphone, and that that moment was spent on contemplation and not on a selfie. Something about her clothes makes her seem contemporary."

Adrian Malloch: "I teach photography to students along with mentoring experienced professional photographers. One subject I emphasise early on is visual literacy. It includes the concept of the emotional value of colour and what the photographic consequences are of that understanding. Yes, the warmth and safety of the campfire against the backdrop of the cool toned backdrop where danger lurked is very likely, in human evolutionary terms, to have created our instinctive emotional relationship with those colours. There are other likely colour triggers, such as aerial perspective—that's the phenomenon whereby distant objects become increasingly blue due to the accumulated effect of water droplets in the atmosphere; stereotypically, distant hills. To our palaeolithic ancestors, distant things are not emotionally relevant. That is, they had little to fear or like about them. More importantly, blue becomes associated with distance. On the other hand, the nearby warmth of skin tone is something we all have an emotional connection to. Warm colours have become intrinsically associated with closeness.

"Of course colour is not the only dichotomy to imply emotional and spatial distance: light and dark, large and small, pattern and formlessness, sharp and soft, and many more are there to be exploited by the thinking photographer."

Herman: "I suppose we see red more easily than keeping cool."

Mike replies: You're bad!  :-)

David Raboin: "Berries against green foliage is a warm accent on a cool background and it's appreciated across many species."

Comments

[Andreas Weber]

https://everypixel.com/aesthetics predicts 99.8% chance that the image is awesome...

[Aaron]

C'mon, surely there's an article coming up, "The other 11 intrinsic compositions?"

[Greg]

Back in the 70's I used to stray. My wife erected an electric fence to help my fidelity to our vows. It worked a treat until I grew to love the pain. At that point my darling took down the fence. It was no longer needed. I had achieved the requisite skill to become the perfect husband.

[scott kirkpatrick]

Red advances towards the viewer. Ble and green recede. Maybe that is why it works one way but not the reverse.

scott

[Josh]

Thanks, Mike. Would love to see your picks for the full dozen. Future post?

[Lubo]

Perhaps related to how our sight evolved to be good at finding colourful fruit among even thick foliage.

[mark jennings]

Cool accents on a warm field? Actually the Mannerist landscape painters of the 16th century developed a technique of suggesting perspective with color: parts of landscapes that were distant, and presumably obscured by haze, were painted in a blue tint. I've seen beautiful pieces with warm and colorful fore and midground set off by small, irresistible views, say, down through a wood or through gaps among buildings, that show cool toned distant prospects.

The warm patches on a cool field, on the other hand, according to British art historian, the late Kenneth Clark, seem to date from the late 15th century, maybe were pushed by a new interest in making painting more exciting, and probably took as inspiration bits of northern European myth like "..Fire in the flood..." on Grendel's Mere in BEOWULF.

All this doesn't say anything about the primitive instincts you offered, but it describes the earliest pertinent imagery I know of.

[Eric Kellerman]

What about the sight of a glorious waterhole in the midst of the desert? Equally welcoming!

[robert quiet photographer]

Interesting..I didn't know this, I must admit, fascinating how what happened so back in the times can influence us today...great!
robert

[Peter from Boulder]

Hi Mike,

The "dozen or so basic, baseline strategies for making a picture appeal to people", with examples, would be a great topic for a series of posts!

[Andrew Middleton]

This comment is mostly unrelated to this post, as it (the post) pertains to color. I am interested in. Black and white and how to better understand tonality, gradation and what makes a black and white image work. Would love to read your thoughts on what makes for good digital black and White and why some of the main differences are between film and digital capture of these type images. I can't be alone in wishing for you to write such a piece. Please? Pretty please??

[David L.]

Blue-yellow polarizer filters are available.

[mark jennings]

The early use of warm patches on cool fields by 15th and 16th century landscape painters, which I brought up in an earlier comment, all suggested fire or sometimes actually depicted fire. The technique got to be popular, and the message was fear and awe: those fires were manifestations of supernatural forces that as often as not weren't benign. Campfires?

Look to early European mythology.

Assigning this or that to "instinct" is a tough business. Different cultures and different periods sometimes seem to show different reactions to common stimuli and symbols.

So we're out here in this cold colored setting - possibly dark too, another intrinsic suggestion that the location is undomesticated and unfamiliar - are we sure that that bright, warm light ahead is friendly? Or is it dangerous?

So the superstitious, violent 15th and 16th century think " Demons!". We think "S'mores with the kids."