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The Terrible Photographer is a storytelling podcast for photographers, designers, and creative humans trying to stay honest in a world that rewards pretending
I want you to picture yourself standing in the middle of Times Square in New York City. It's late afternoon in the summer and it's that weird hour when the sunlight and the LED billboards fight against each other for visual dominance. The air is thick. There's too many smells, too much noise. Your shoes are sticking slightly to the pavement and there's a guy dressed like Spider Man yelling into his phone.
Patrick:A child crying somewhere in the distance. And you, you're just standing there. You look up and see every sign is screaming at you for attention. Bright yellows, cherry reds, that insanely bright Coca Cola white. And everywhere you turn, sale signs, show posters, neon restaurant logos.
Patrick:It's visual chaos, an algorithmic rainbow. And then across the street you see her. A woman in a cobalt blue trench coat just standing still. Just an average looking woman staring into her phone. She's not smiling and she's not doing anything attention grabbing.
Patrick:She's probably just answering a text. But for some reason you can't stop looking because in a sea of colors trying to shout the loudest, she doesn't have to. She just seemingly fits. Or maybe she doesn't fit at all and that's just why she's so obvious. Either way, your eyes go to her.
Patrick:Before you process it, before you rationalize it, your brain has already made that decision. Look at her. This is a terrible photographer podcast. My name is Patrick Four, and today's episode is called my friend Hugh. I'm not talking about Jackman, Hefner, or Grant.
Patrick:We're talking about my favorite kind of hue, color. So what's going on with the woman in the cobalt blue trench coat? Why did she attract your attention so quickly? In the vast craziness that is Times Square, why did one woman catch your attention so clearly and so quickly? In a space overwhelmed by warm aggressive hues, reds, oranges, yellows, a cool tone like cobalt blue becomes a visual and emotional exhale.
Patrick:The eye reads it as different. It's restful, intentional. Psychologists call this the pop out effect when your brain is so overwhelmed by too much information, it searches for what's different, not louder or flashier, just still. And in that moment, cobalt becomes clarity, direction. It doesn't just match the scene, it disrupts it.
Patrick:And that that is the power of color. Not to decorate, to disrupt, to direct, to tell the viewer where to look and how to feel when they get there. Segment one, everything about color in five minutes. Alright. Let's get a little nerdy, put on your pocket protector and let's get into it.
Patrick:You see color is not pigment. It's a wavelength. Every color we see is just our brain interpreting different frequencies of light. Red has the longest wavelength around 700 nanometers. Blue shorter around four seventy five.
Patrick:Violet even shorter. But let's go deeper. Color is part of the electromagnetic spectrum. A massive range of energy waves that involves x rays, ultraviolet waves, microwaves and radio waves. Visible light, that's just a tiny sliver of this whole thing.
Patrick:The only part humans can see sits between three hundred and eighty and seven hundred and fifty nanometers. That's what we call the visual spectrum. So that begs the question why do we see color at all? When light hits an object that object absorbs some wavelengths and redirects others. The wavelengths that bounce off, that's what hits our eye.
Patrick:So that bright red ripe tomato absorbs all the visible light except for red which it reflects. And that bright red enters our eye, hits our retinas and activates the cone cells. Special photoreceptors turned to detect red and green and blue. Our brain then takes that information, that ratio of signals from those three types of cones and creates this experience of color. So what we call purple isn't actually a wavelength at all.
Patrick:It's a construct, a remix. The brain blending red, blue and going, yeah, that feels kinda right. And what's even more fascinating, different materials reflect light in different ways because of their atomic and molecular structure. A blue shirt doesn't just look blue because of dye. It's reflecting shorter wavelengths due to the way its fabric interacts with light.
Patrick:So let's talk about light temperature. Daylight, which is around 5,500 k. A tungsten bulb, a warm Edison bulb closer to 3,200. Candlelight which is even lower. The k stands for Kelvin.
Patrick:And as that numbers shift, so does the emotional temperature of the scene. Color temperature isn't just a white balance setting in our cameras. It's an emotional vibe. It's your brain interpreting those shifts without you even realizing it. And then there's color contrast.
Patrick:Putting complementary colors side by side creates this intensity. Think red and green, blue and orange, yellow and purple. That's why movie scenes, movie color grading uses teal and orange because it works. It creates visual tension that pulls the eye in. There's vast amounts of science beneath all of this, but the beauty of it, you don't need a PhD to use it.
Patrick:You just need to notice, to pay attention and decide with intention. Because every time you choose a background, an outfit, a light source, you're choosing color and color is never neutral. It always is saying something even if you don't know what it is. This brings us to segment two, the emotions of color. Color hits us before we even think.
Patrick:Red gets our heart racing. Blue cools us down. Yellow can trigger appetite and green signal safety. And there's a reason we don't paint bedrooms bright orange or at least sane people don't paint their bedrooms bright orange. Or we don't paint stop signs pale lavender.
Patrick:Our brains and bodies are wired to respond to color quickly and instinctively. So there's some research done at the University of Winnipeg and they found that people make up their minds about a product usually within ninety seconds. And up to 90% of that decision is yeah, based upon color alone. And it's not just psychology, it's survival. It's our lizard brains.
Patrick:In nature color often signals danger or delight. Poison berries, ripe fruit, fire. In photography we use color to do the same. Telling viewers what to feel before they know why they feel it. And once you start seeing color as an emotional language, not just an aesthetic choice, everything changes.
Light Darkness and Colors:The German poet and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, is most famous for his poetry. But he also spent forty years drawing up a theory of colors. He regarded it as his most important work.
Patrick:This is from a documentary called Light, Darkness, and Colors. It was released in 1998 in Denmark, but it sounds like it's straight out of the seventies. Like, you know, you watched it in a classroom right before the fire drill after coming in from recess. It explores how humans perceive color, the psychology behind it, and how it's rooted in both science and emotion.
Light Darkness and Colors:Goethe concluded that colors affected us, body, mind, and soul. We associate the yellows with the properties of light. We perceive them as warm and textural. We associate the blues with darkness. We perceive them as cold and spatial.
Light Darkness and Colors:We ascribe properties to the colors corresponding to the polarity of light and darkness, such as hot and cold, proximity and distance, major and minor, and we use colors to describe things in our lives, golden eras, feeling blue. Although each one of us is unique, we perceive the same blue sky and golden sun, and fundamentally, we react to them in the same way.
Patrick:So that might sound a little coy, but they're still true. Color isn't just about aesthetics, it's about instinct. But color isn't a universal language. It's cultural, it's contextual, and it's deeply personal. There's a reason why red means love on Valentine's Day.
Patrick:But in some cultures, it means luck. In others, it means danger. White is purity in the West and it's mourning in the East. What we feel about color isn't just biology, it's also biography. This is where anthropology and aesthetics collide because color for humans has always been symbolic.
Patrick:In ancient Egypt, green was sacred, a color of resurrection and fertility. In medieval Europe, purple was so costly to produce. It became synonymous with royalty and divine authority. In China, yellow was once reserved exclusively for the emperor. In Japan, indigo dyeing was so culturally significant that the country became known for it, giving rise for centuries of textile tradition and symbolism.
Patrick:Faber Berin, one of the leading voices in modern color theory once wrote, the use of color is not merely a matter of personal preference. It's a reflection of culture, of time, and the ever changing human psyche. He argued that our color choices aren't just aesthetic, that they're anthropological. They're coded by some collective memory, ritual, and religion, marketing, and even war. Burren also believed that color could shape mood, behavior, and even architecture.
Patrick:In hospitals, calming blue was used to ease anxiety. In restaurants, red and yellow were chosen to stimulate appetite. Remember Pizza Hut back when we were kids. In prison, soft pinks were used to pacify aggression. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.
Patrick:But always, it seemed to say something about what we believed that color could do. And that brings us to photography. As photographers, we are really visual anthropologists. Every image is a study in time and context. It's a reflection not only of what we saw, but how we interpreted it.
Patrick:And when you choose a color palette, you're not just deciding what looks good, you're deciding what this moment means. Are you leaning into nostalgia or rebellion or any joy or grief? Color sets a tone but also sets a timeline. A desaturated palette might even evoke a nineteen seventies film. A harsh green tint might read as a sci fi or surveillance.
Patrick:Golden hour warmth might make us think of a memory or maybe longing. And you don't have to spell it out for your viewer, but you do have to choose. One of Byrne's lesser known observations is this, color is never neutral. Even gray. Supposedly the most neutral color of all carries weight.
Patrick:There's corporate gray. There's rainy day gray. There's military gray. We fill in the blanks with what we know. So if you're making work, especially work meant to say something personal, consider what your colors are borrowing from.
Patrick:What legacy they are tapping into? What culture? What memory? What feeling are they dragging along with them? Color isn't just static, it's loaded.
Patrick:And any good photographer doesn't just capture a moment, they shape how that moment is remembered. And we don't need to overthink it but we do need to be thoughtful. We do need to be considerate of what color can bring to the table. Color is a tool but it also has a tone of voice and good storytellers they listen before they speak. And that brings us to segment four, how to use color.
Patrick:Building a color story. So let's talk about using color with intention. Because it's one thing to know that red makes people hungry or blue calms them down, but how do you actually use that knowledge to make better work? Well, that's where color theory comes in. Color theory is the framework behind every instinctive color choice you have ever made.
Patrick:Whether you've been shooting for two years or two decades, understanding the relationships between colors helps refine what you already feel. So this isn't about rote memorization. It's about the fluency of the language of color. The foundation of it all, we'll say is the color wheel. The primary colors are red, yellow, blue.
Patrick:Secondary is orange, green, violet. And from there, there's an endless web of hues and tints and tones and emotional possibilities. And photographers often overlook color theory as something for graphic designers or whatever. But that's a mistake because every decision you make, clothing, background, props, color grading contributes to what designers call a color story. So what exactly is a color story?
Patrick:Let's just define it. Color story is an emotional arc told through hue. It's how the scene feels before a word is said. That's why Wes Anderson films look the way they do. So you start by choosing a dominant color, then you build your world around that choice.
Patrick:Do you want complimentary contrast, red and green, blue and orange, color opposites on that wheel, or maybe you want something more subtle, which is analogous color schemes. Colors next to each other on that wheel, which they create harmony. Think of a fall palette, mustard, burnt oranges, rust. In monochrome, even more daring. Think of early Sofia Coppola, or that one perfect fashion editorial where everything is shades of beige except for a single red lip.
Patrick:This is the part where most photographers get stuck. Not because they don't understand color, but because they don't slow down enough to plan color. So here's some practical advice. When planning a shoot, personal or commercial, start with a feeling. Ask yourself, what do I want the viewer to feel when they see this image?
Patrick:And then what colors support that? Joy might look like golden yellows and soft greens. Grief might be desaturated grays and cool blue shadows. Desire deep reds and velvet textures and heavy shadows. Now here's something overlooked, consistency.
Patrick:Build a mood board, sample your own work, find what colors keep showing up. That's your subconscious visual fingerprint to lean into. And don't just think of color as a backdrop, which is what a lot of photographers do. Let it take the lead. Let it drive the bus.
Patrick:Color can be the subject, the emotion, the tension, or the surprise. Starting to look at color the way a director looks at sound, not just as filler but as narrative. Use color to amplify, to contradict, to foreshadow, to ground. Let the wardrobe and the wall speak to each other. Let the skin tones in the backdrop tell a secret.
Patrick:Let the red dress in the black and white world say something. Because when you start thinking in color stories, not just in color corrections, your work moves from documentation to direction, observation to orchestration. And that's where the good stuff lives. Alright. Let's bring this one home, shall we?
Patrick:Today, we just didn't talk about color as an aesthetic. We explored it as a language. We covered the basics of light and color spectrum. How color hits us emotionally before we even register it. How culture shapes the way we interpret hues, and how to build intentional color stories using simple color theory and intentional choices.
Patrick:We heard from Faber Burin, and maybe even a little part of ourselves that still believes that color is something worth obsessing over. So here's your creative challenge. This week, yes, I want you to plan another photoshoot, big or small, with a single color story at the center. I want the color to be the hero of this story. Here's step one.
Patrick:I want you to start with an emotion and then pick a hue that supports it. There's this tool that I absolutely love called Adobe Color. It's free and it's great. It lets you build, explore, and save color palettes. You can browse trending color schemes, extract palettes from your own images, or even build one from scratch using their color wheel.
Patrick:And I use this all the time when planning shoots, whether I'm styling wardrobe, picking backgrounds, or even color grading a post. Adobe Color gives me a visual roadmap. It helps me decide in advance how I want the image to feel and what colors will support that tone. And the best part, you can build a palette around a single emotion or idea and then reverse engineer your shoot around it. It becomes the backbone of your visual storytelling.
Patrick:It's not just decoration, again, it's direction. Look at complementary colors, triads, monochrome. Let the science guide the story. Build your shoot around that choice. And remember, think about wardrobe, think about setting, think about light, let the color drive the bus, let it shape the narrative.
Patrick:You don't need a huge production. Use what you have. One location, one outfit, one idea, but I just want you to make it intentional. Think about your choices. And when you look at the final shot, I want you to ask yourself, does this color speak?
Patrick:Does it feel like yours? Because when color becomes more than a background, when it becomes part of the voice, that's when you're not just capturing a moment, you're directing one. Hey. One quick note before I go. This podcast is officially moving to a once a week release schedule.
Patrick:Starting this podcast has really been one of the most creatively fulfilling things that I've done in a long time. And it started out one way and sort of morphed into something deeper, a little more complicated. And I'm still trying to figure it out. And honestly, I wanna do more of it. And I've been so stoked on the feedback that I've gotten from friends and, like, the seven of you who listened to it, and I'm so thankful for each of you.
Patrick:But I wanted to let you know that I'm gonna slow down just a little bit because I wanna up the quality. I wanna do more storytelling, and I wanna invest more time into research. So with that being said, it's gonna be once a week, every single Tuesday. But I also wanna find new ways to bring in more people into the podcast. I definitely want more voices in this thing, yours included.
Patrick:So there's gonna be a new way for you to submit your own story, your own voice story, share a thought, ask a question, or just send in something weird and funny, and details are coming soon about that. In the meantime, the best way to stay connected is to follow our new Instagram. I'm super stoked about it. If you just go over to Instagram and then search for terrible photographer, one word obviously, or head over to terriblephotographer.com, there's a link there. And then sign up for a newsletter so you can stay updated.
Patrick:You'll be first to hear when we drop bonus content and updates and all that kind of stuff, yada yada yada. Also, be sure, stay tuned about the book. If you are interested in the book or making progress, it's definitely slower than I thought it was gonna be. We have a date of June 25 for a publication date. That's when that's gonna be released to everybody.
Patrick:We're working on a prerelease copy situation, hopefully coming out in sometime in May. If you head over to the website, terribleflower.com, you can get more details, sign up for the newsletter, all that kind of good stuff. But until then, I'll see you next week. Stay curious, stay weird, and yeah, stay terrible.