“When I began to see the overall picture of what was happening, it changed my entire perception of photography…I had mistakenly thought grass was green.” – Galen Rowell

Discussions of many photography topics have the potential to veer deep into complex technical territory that may appeal more to scientists than to artists, and color theory is certainly one of those topics that can become rather arcane quite easily. What follows is a guide for landscape photographers who are more artistically inclined, those who are primarily interested in applying color theory to achieve creative goals.

In producing my own landscape photographs, I rarely dwell on technical nomenclature or try to adhere rigidly to theoretical constructs, so this guide dispenses with most of the terminology and many theorems that I have learned about color in decades of studying art and its history. Rather than laying out a summary of relevant science and terminology, I am sharing the principles that I find most valuable in my own work, all derived from color theory but distilled down into some straightforward advice for getting creative with color. Many of the following ideas may be helpful in the field, but they become especially useful during the development of a photograph, and so each section below includes specific post-processing tips that you can put to use right away.