The Three-Color Limit

One of the must useful techniques I discovered was realizing that most great photographs have no more than three colors in the background. Even if the posing is excellent and the lighting exquisite, allowing too many colors in the background splits your viewer’s attention between your subjects and the colors scattered all over the place.

While I was teaching this concept at my workshops, students made me aware that it’s not easy to isolate background colors. That’s because the eye is not accustomed to separating familiar objects from their colors. For example, if you go out to the street you will see cars. Your brain simplifies the scene and simply views those objects as “cars.” However, you must train your brain to see as a photographer does, not as an average person would. So you must see those cars as little patches of color instead. When a red car goes by, tell yourself, “There goes a red patch of color.” Similarly, a stop sign becomes a red octagon.