I have often photographed this narrow passageway leading to a side entrance of a local hotel. Depending upon the angle of light and the nature of the hotel’s painted colors, this scene is constantly changing. In April of 2016, it looked quite different when I photographed it in morning light. (It appears immediately after this image in this gallery at http://www.pbase.com/pnd1/image/163098158). I built that image not only around its brilliant color contrasts, but also created a composition based on the geometric shadows supplied by the angle of the sun itself.

In October of 2017, I again went back to photograph this hotel, along with a former student. I made this photograph in the late afternoon, as the sun illuminated the end of the narrow passageway from overhead. I still use geometry to organize the image, but the colors become far more important. The saturated beauty of the pink and yellow paint, turning to red and orange in the warming light, now dominates the scene.

The saguaros in the lower half of this image represent life. The contrasting top half of this photograph features dead stone, yet nature illuminates it with its last light and brings it to life as well. This story is best told by the colors themselves. The rich greens of nature rise upwards as the saguaro march towards the wall of Peralta Canyon. That very wall will stop their advance – nothing can live on that wall. Yet that harsh stone canyon wall in the upper half of this image glows with the symbolic spirit of nature, as the setting sun gilds the rock, and makes it into a work of great beauty.

The company responsible for decorating a dining room opening this week at Sagewood, the retirement community where I live, recently selected this image as one of the new restaurant's six art pieces. (The theme of the restaurant itself uses the same title as this image, which made it a good fit.) They printed this image nearly four feet wide, so that it's detail will be visible from a distance. When I saw this large print for the first time, a message came through that was not immediately apparent to me. This layered mass of wildflowers became more than a mere carpet of color. It becomes a metaphor for the desert itself, a matrix of color and textures vividly contrasting to our pre-conception of what a desert looks like. The huge sizing of the print on the dining room wall made the spines on the cactus so visible that they powerfully contrast to the soft, delicate colors of the yellow Brittlebush blossoms arrayed below them. From a distance, an "S-Curve" composition becomes apparent -- the image flows out of the lower right hand corner and moves from purple and green to the bright yellow of the Brittlebush that sweep back across the entire frame into the row of Cholla cacti that carries us back across the uppermost layer of the image. This photograph makes a powerful counterpoint to the closeup image "Desert Surprise" that follows this image in this gallery. (The restaurant designers also made a large print of that image and used it to contrast with this one on an opposing wall. On the side wall that runs between them, they have placed four large paintings of vividly colored desert blossoms.)

The lavish scale and color of this coffee shop’s décor was surprisingly elegant. I contrast the vivid coloration of this stylized painted diner to the monochromatic black pail holding inexpensive white plastic forks, bringing this image a touch of incongruity in both content and color. The brilliant color flows through into the lower right hand corner of the image, illuminating the shelf of a cabinet holding condiment packets.

A 200-foot long construction wall, surrounding the site of Monterey’s future Market Hall, has been transformed into a colorful vegetarian dream by noted artist Khalid Hussein working along side of a dozen local high school and college student artists. I moved in a particularly colorful segment of the wall featuring vivid primary colors and waited for this child to bring it to life by stepping into my frame.

Barcelona’s “hop-on, hop-off” double-decked tour bus waits for customers near the port. The ticket agent and bus alike wear red colors, and its vivid hue drew my eye. I abstracted the bus by slicing it vertically at the front, pairing its incongruous hopping frog logo with the ticket agent who holds a pen to her lip. I also liked the way the curve of the window echoes the curve of the upper deck railing.

These women, selling the products of their farms at a Sunday market in Ecuador’s Andean highlands, wear the primary colors of their culture – vivid red, blue, and yellow skirts, offset by the pristine monochromatic Panama hats on their heads. I also liked the variation in expression and hand positions as they change from person to person. The variation in costume underscores not only their cultural background, but their varying personalities as well.

They may look like ice cream cones, but they are not. These colorful confections are cones packed with sugary white, pink and yellow frosting. I photographed a tray of them from the side, bringing into play the colorful plastic spoons inserted into each of them. The vivid red, orange, green and brown cones form the basis of the image, arrayed neatly upon the well-worn blue tray. Chordeleg is a destination favored by Ecuadorian tourists, primarily for its jewelry. When shopper’s fatigue sets in, many indulge in such sweet treats as this.

This “Wooden Indian” currently functions as an advertisement in front of an antique shop. It represents an early version of the genre, which originally was developed by European tobacconists in the 17th century, long before such advertisements became stereotypical portrayals of Native Americans. Because European carvers had never seen a Native American, these early “cigar store Indians” looked more like black slaves with feathered headdresses. They were known in the trade as “Virginians,” and used to advertise tobacco and cigars, first in Europe and later in the US, continuing well into the 20th century. I built this image around the brilliant primary colors of the feathers, which create striking tension when played against the sculpture’s upturned eyeballs and white necklace.

This ornate 19th century mailbox has been painted many times over the years. Its most recent incarnation is blue on blue – the fence that supports it was probably most recently painted along with it. The bird carrying the letter is quite charming in itself – it seems trapped under the layers of paint that have muted its flight over the decades.

Two layers of vivid blue color bring this image together. The courier on the bike in the foreground of the image wears a blue shirt and blue cap, nearly the same hue as on the peeling plywood construction site wall that makes up the entire background. In between them, I use a framing device -- two white vehicles parked so as to leave a space between them. I freeze the courier within that space to create maximum tension. Between the cars and the wall, a woman walks in the opposite direction. Neither the courier nor the woman acknowledges each other’s presence. Such is the nature of New York City.

One of the most important works of public art within the Scottsdale Civic Center Plaza is Robert Indiana’s popular “Love” sculpture. I have often photographed it with my tutorial students, and always related its oversized letters to some kind of human behavior. (See http://www.pbase.com/image/23370265 ) The most powerful aspect of this sculpture is its brilliant primary color: red. On my most recent visit with a tutorial student, we were fortunate to find a man repainting the sculpture. I include only the upper portions of the letters “L” and “O” here, and link the brilliant red coloration to a roller loaded with red paint that hangs in mid-air after a decisive thrust. It is the nature of color itself, particularly primary colors such as red and blue, that makes the image work. Without this man’s red roller, frozen in time as it is raised against the deep blue sky, this image could not function as expression.

In my own imagination, I think of the colors of Old Russia under the Czars as red and yellow. This building, dating to the Czarist era, provides a perfect match of primary colors. A life sized elegant statue adorns an alcove, adding human scale, and I use a barren tree as a foreground layer to break up the color and suggest the presence of the seasons and of time.

The shadowed clock marks the time, as do the flow of shadows that fall upon the bright red façade. I organized the image as a geometric pattern of verticals and horizontals holding a circle and a rectangle. The brilliant red color breathes life into the image, demanding our attention and holding it.

All three primary colors – red, blue, and yellow – make their appearance in this image. I abstract the ship in drydock by including only the stern, propeller, and rudder in my frame. I also chose the subject for its diagonal repetition and the wonderful tension-filled negative space that flows between the shop and its rudder.

Portage and Main is an intersection in downtown Winnipeg. Many call it Canada’s windiest and coldest intersection. I paid my own homage to this famous spot on a lovely fall day. I fill much of my frame with saturated red flowers and green grasses, just to belie the frigid myth. I place the city’s World War I monument into soft focus as background context.

The 1,700 square foot “History of Ipswich,” mural, painted on the wall of an old mill building, traces local history from the 1600s to the present day. This portion of the mural was painted on three walls that were perpendicular to each other. The most brilliant colors are the result of full sunlight, while all else falls into shadow. We see here how sunlight creates contrast and saturation, compared to the flattening effect of shadow on color.

The Indian tribe that designed this totem pole certainly understood the compelling power of two of the three primary colors. The open red lips of the figure, along with its screaming red nostrils, roar out at us from a vivid yellow face, framed in bold black lines.

I exposed on the yellow face, making the rest of frame go into deep shadow and enriching the colors in the process.

An enormous mural dominates the scene here, depicting various symbols close to the heart of Austonians. The colors tell the story here, offering a purplish, pinkish homage to the city and its western heritage. Using a 24mm wideangle lens, I was able to get about half the mural into the frame from across the street. I waited for someone to walk below the mural in order to give it a sense of scale. Finally, a pedestrian entered my frame, and I caught him just as the diagonal thrust of his leg echoed the diagonal thrust of the huge fence post that anchors the mural behind him.

The red oval on the back of this bench resembles a set of parted lips. Yet the young woman who sits upon this bench incongruously covers her own lips with her fingers. Without color, this image would not tell the same story.

I initially intended this image to be black and white – further abstracting the already blurred figures rushing across the spot of light falling on the vast marble floor of the station. But when I saw how the small orange glow coming from the illuminated display on the cell phone of the woman at the center of the image created a focal point and added much to the meaning of this photograph, I retained the color. If I had converted this image to black and white as originally planned, the phone would vanish as a focal point, and the image would fail to express its multi-taking message. The lesson here is clear: it is usually best to let our content determine the form of an image, rather than to allow the form of an image to dictate its content and dilute the message in the process.

I try to look for similar colors that can tie the various elements of a picture together. Such is the case in this image of a butcher shop in the market of Douz, a small town near the Sahara Desert in southern Tunisia. I was drawn to it not just because of the matching blue door and blue window – I also liked the layer of blue provided by the tarp in the wheelbarrow that stands along with a bicycle just in front of the shop. All of these elements provide colorful context for a local shopper who stares at us from the doorway.

I built the mood of this image upon the lingering colors of a September sunset. Looking north from a sixth floor window of a New York City apartment building, I watched and waited as the sun set to my left, bathing the skyline of central Manhattan in a rich reddish gold light. The longer I waited, the more the scene fell into shadow. As I made this image, only the art deco spire of the Chrysler building and a few apartment buildings on the right reflected colors of the fading sun, while soft gray clouds added a layer of dramatic texture over the blue evening sky.

I play the strong colors of the saris against the muted colors of the wall in dappled light here. I saw the space between the end of the food cart and the advertising poster, and waited for pedestrians to walk into it. These women, in their wind-blown saris, were the most colorful to pass through that space while I was shooting here.

The young vendor is overwhelmed by the intensity of color that surrounds him and engulfs his shop. I caught him as he was about to leave his little shop on the sidewalks alongside Chau Doc’s sprawling city marketplace. The colors of his shirt and hat help merge him into the colors of the shop itself. With an array of flowers on his left and bundle of colorful packed items on his right, he seems almost incidental. And that is exactly what I was trying to say. In some cases, the man makes the sale. In this case, the product seems to sell itself. The man becomes somewhat incidental. And that is the contribution of the color here. In black and white, everything becomes both equal and confused. In color, the flowers definitely rule.

Canyon de Chelly embraces nearly 84,000 acres within the Navajo reservation. While administered by the US National Park Service, these rock canyons belong to the Navajo people. Nowhere is the phrase "Indian Summer" more fitting – the temperatures for our November visit were warm, and nature's autumnal colors were virtually on fire for us. Using a 28mm wideangle lens, I moved in on the canopy to fill the upper third of the frame with the deep burnt orange color. A band of back-lighted orange and yellow leaves fills the middle third and the animated reddish brown tree trunks dominate the bottom third. If the assault of vivid color becomes too much for the eye, it can always flee to the dull brown forest floor for respite.

The most mundane subjects can aspire to art. Such is the nature of color at sunset. I made this image in one of Beijing’s hutongs, or alleyways. The setting sun has bathed its simple canvas cover in gold, and burnished the metal facing with red lettering on the cart as well. The red brick, and rusted frame of the car, along with the reddish sidewalk all contribute to the expression of beauty here.

The quiet Eastern Courtyards of The Forbidden City hold many wonders, among them some trees that look as if they are wearing military garb. The green and brown coloration, and the jigsaw puzzle-like shapes of those color patches are stunning reminders that nature knows how to take care of its own. I moved in to abstract that bark, including none of the tree’s shape or form. The knot at lower left is the only clue I offer.

Dawn light illuminates the famed trail that leads from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon down to a plateau and ultimately to the Colorado River. I made this wideangle image at 5:45 a.m., just before the effect of the rising sun became visible. What we see here is the equivalent of twilight – the sun’s light is being refracted and scattered off the earth’s atmosphere, even though we don’t yet see the sun itself. The result: a palette of delicate colors – the browns, mauves, and pinks that give the famed Grand Canyon much of its character. I chose this vantage point so that I could use the twisted tree trunk in the foreground to echo the twists and turns of the Bright Angel Trail on the plateau below. (Compare the colors of this dawn image to those of a twilight image of the canyon at http://www.pbase.com/image/83717338 .)

It was 115 blistering degrees on the July day I made this image. I was working with one of my tutorial students in my own backyard, and it was too hot to remain in the sun for more than a few moments. Besides, the sun was directly overhead, making nature photography very difficult. These factors drove us deep into the shade of the palms, forcing us to work in flat light, without benefit of shadow or highlights. We had to concentrate instead on line, pattern, and most of all, the blending of harmonious colors. This Bird of Paradise plant, with its complex and delicate tangle of blooms, stems, and buds offers all of them and more. Because natural shadows are missing, we lose the typical three-dimensional perspective we usually see in nature photographs. Instead, this image looks more like a Chinese silk-screen painting than a photograph. The peach colored stucco wall harmonizes with the red and orange blossoms and buds, and offers a softly textured backdrop, illuminated entirely by reflected light. Sometimes a difficult photographic situation not only can teach us an indelible lesson, but can lead to unexpected success.

This image is about contrasting colors on the ends of wet pilings. They were beneath a pier along the Petaluma River, and no longer supporting anything. Most likely, they are remnants of a previous structure. Nature takes its own toll – years of tides have led to the flaking of old paint, and bright green moss commonly found in damp habitats has reinvigorated two of the three pilings. Using a spot meter, I expose for the brightly colored pilings, which causes the underside of the pier behind them to go even darker. The moss brings dead wood to life once again on both the left and right but the piling in the center is diminished in size, without color or vitality – it is nothing more than a decaying stump. The three pilings use contrasting color to tell the story of nature’s winners and losers.

I caught this woman, baby strapped to her back, deep in a souk as the setting sun grazed her face. The play of light and color here is painterly -- it makes the moment into a happy memory. The essence of this image rests in restraint due to deliberate underexposure. The colors are rich and warm, yet subtle in their intensity and visibility. There reds, browns, pinks, purples, oranges, and greens here, but they do not clash. They harmonize in a subtle rainbow of color that expresses the mood and atmosphere of the moment.

Colorfully dressed soldiers watch over a building complex that houses Morocco's government. King Mohammed VI stays in his own private residence elsewhere. I stress the red uniforms by abstracting the image – honing it down to the interplay of the red uniforms and the white belts, gloves, and straps. Men with guns in hand often want to be noticed (and feared). Red is a color that will draw notice very quickly.

The basis of this image rests in its colors. The first thing I noticed was how red ties the image together. The red decoration at the throat is echoed by the mannequin’s red lips, off-red hair, and the red shawl in the background. The blue shawl – a complementary primary color – matching the white dress and white shirts hanging at left, gives the overall image a red, white, and blue motif. Since Moroccan culture was greatly affected by the presence of the French from 1912-1956, perhaps this display is a subtle reference to the French tricolor?

Essaouira, an ancient walled city on Morocco's Atlantic coast, is home to a large fishing fleet. The blue boats are moored so closely together than one could almost walk across the harbor on them. The cumulative power of all of these fishing boats crunched with the four sides of my frame is greatly intensified by the fact that all of them are the same color, and a primary color at that!

Fewer than a thousand people live in Green River. Perhaps the quickest way to sell a car is to park it next to the town’s coffee shop -- everyone who needs to buy a car will almost certainly see it. This one can’t be overlooked: a bright yellow Beetle. All three prime colors – red, yellow, and blue – are present in this scene. It is yellow that steals the show and begs for our attention.

The colorful golden lanterns standout against a rich blue evening sky, bringing an oasis of warmth to the chilly open grid of timbers that form their ceiling. The figures of the bear and pine tree on the lanterns are the icons of Yellowstone itself. The low vantage point and the little Leica’s 28mm wideangle lens, allow me to get close to the lanterns for detail, yet still include much of the open log portico roof that supports them.

These must be the very rocks that gave Yellowstone its name. We came upon them on the face of a hill near the Golden Gate, just south of Mammoth Hot Springs. I used a 300mm focal length to fill the frame with them. The harsh, overhead noon light creates deep, high key shadows that deepen the relief and give the rocks a three dimensional appearance.

This is one of 1.5 million grebes that float on the salty waters of California’s Mono Lake. The red volcanic hills that surround the lake cast their colors upon its waters at dawn, giving this grebe a golden feeding ground. The reflected color gives this image both its visual punch and its story. For more on the Eared Grebe, see: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Eared_Grebe.html

Starfish, and anemones, some open and some closed, make for a colorful gathering on the edge of a tide pool. Color plays an essential role in this image. Without it, we would not readily see the striking differences between species of tide pool life. As with flowers, it is color that gives these creatures much of their identity. Seen together, the greens, oranges, and purples in this image create a chromatic palette that resonates with lush theatricality.

Red and blue are both primary colors, and this hotel has used them to draw attention to its contemporary architecture. I make use of these colors in warm morning light to enrich the image, stimulate the imagination of the viewer, and symbolize energy and modernity. I layer the image with a screen of foliage to create the illusion of depth. The powerful shadows also provide a three-dimensional thrust to the structure. The image is tied together by the glowing reflection of the red wall upon a shadowed wall just across from it, as well as by the linkage of the blue wall at the back with the lighter blue sky overhead.

Marching to the beat of drums and gongs, a contingent of new guards, dressed in brilliantly colored costumes, passes through the gates of the palace. They wear brilliant yellow costumes, and led by a man wearing red, blue and yellow. They march behind yellow and red flags. Everything in this image except for the palace gates and the softly focused trees in the distance is a primary color. The bright but flat lighting of a thinly overcast day is ideal for bringing such colors by eliminating variations in light and shadow.

Red is China's favorite color. There is a lot of red to be seen on this Beijing Street. I was attracted first by the red lanterns decorating this house and the street in front of it. A woman wearing a red t-shirt under her jacket walked towards me, carrying a red plastic bag and a red purse. Just as I was about to shoot, a man emerged from the doorway, carrying another red lantern. Later I noticed that the tiny lions at the doorstep had red ribbons on their necks, a window had a red frame, a red bag was resting on the sidewalk, red electrical wire was used to power the lanterns, and there are even red street signs in the far background. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Red is the most powerful primary color, rich in symbolic meaning, and historically linked to Chinese culture.

Our Guilin hotel overlooked Banyan Lake. Every morning, exercisers would go through their routines on its shore just below our windows. The Chinese flags flying in front of our hotel provided vivid counterpoint to their labors. The primary colors of the flag are so strong that the picture is more about national identity than exercise, turning the exercising woman into context.

The Bagdad Café is a remote roadhouse still serving meals to travelers along the former US Route 66. It was the location for a German film of the same name, shot here in 1988.

Several of the café’s staff were extras in the movie. I made this portrait of the chef (Would this be Michael? Or is it Bud?) looking out at us over a few of the eggs he made for a hungry group of 20 photographers (including several pbase artists) who filled every seat in the house. This image works well in color because of the sense of presence it gives to the chef and the emphasis it places on the Coke ad that dominates the bill of fare. I also shot a similar image at the café in black and white, a journalistic picture that takes us back into time. See it by clicking the thumbnail below:

I have made many images of cemetery monuments, but rarely one as dependent on color for its meaning as this one. This is the only significant monument in a parched 19th century burial ground riddled with prairie dog burrows. Capped by a broken column symbolizing a life cut short, the monument is draped in a pall. Just as I began to shoot, the cloud cover parted, revealing a patch of sky overhead, streaked by a layer of almost invisible wisps forming a transparent shroud. I shifted my camera position to push the monument into the heart of that sky. Later, while post processing this photograph, I found that the more contrast and saturation I added to the image, the deeper the blue in the sky became. Played against the neutrality of the clouds and the tree, as well as the grim high key lighting on the tan monument, the color of that sky becomes a vivid symbol of eternity, an ideal metaphor to express the character of this haunted place.

During our brief stay in Bangkok prior to visiting Laos and Burma, I made this image of a decorated rice barge because of the way its colors work as expression. I include four different zones of color in this image. The predominant color is a deep reddish brown, the color of the hull itself. It is accented by a subtle blue stripe at the bottom, with handsome copper trim at top and also functioning, as the two incongruous “eyes.” And finally, there is the vivid mass of colors in the Thai decorations that hang from the prow. It is as if an exotic headdress has been draped over the forehead of the barge. All of these colors add up to express a sense of celebration. And that is what this rice barge is now used for – carrying visitors up and down Bangkok’s Chao Phraya River every evening and serving them festive dinners of Thai delicacies. These colors fit both its mood and mission.

These monks seem well aware of the vivid colors their robes bring to this most beautiful of all Laotian towns. The interplay of yellow, orange, and maroon here arrests the eye, and speaks volumes about the men who wear these colors, many of them for the rest of their lives. They may own nothing but three robes, a razor, a strainer, a belt, and an alms bowl for their daily meal. They must also vow to injure or offend no one, and remain celibate. These monks will live spare, lean lives. As compensation, however, the colors of their robes radiate energy and beauty. They may live in poverty, yet dress in the richest of colors.

A woman walks through one of the courtyards within Mandalay's splendid Maha Muni Pagoda at sunset. As she stepped into the golden light, I couldn't help but wonder what she might have been thinking at that moment. I was fascinated at how the brilliant red tiles were transformed into golden pools when reflected within the paving of the plaza. I photographed person after person walking across this spot, until this woman gave meaning to those colors by folding her arms in thought and then walked, one foot before the other, into the gold.

Daybreak in the Eastern Sierras brings light and color to desert texture that is simultaneously mysterious and beautiful. The colors change very quickly. As the sun rises and the cloud cover shifts, the sagebrush glows in pink, red, brown, and green tones, while the snow capped Sierras are tinged in amber. For a few moments, the desert floor appeared as a reddish brown sea of sage, leading our eye to richly colored hills of the same color, and that is the instant of color I’ve preserved here. Red is the most powerful of all colors, and when it appears in such scale in nature, it can be breathtaking. The snows of the Sierra Nevada Mountains add context to give this image its identity as high desert.

Photographing autumn landscape colors at their best is a matter of timing. For these trees at 8000 feet above sea level, mid-October proved just about perfect. This image is not as about color itself as it is about subtle and not so subtle variations in color. The image begins at the bottom with shades of soft lavender and brownish green. Across the middle of the image there’s a transitional zone where green, yellow, and the slender trunks of Aspen trees all come together and then explode into a rich outpouring of deep yellow tinged with orange. Yet the eye goes to the variation that is most pronounced – the five or six large evergreen trees that proclaim their individuality but stubbornly refusing to change color. The tone and intensity of color usually depends on the nature of the light that strikes it. In this case, the light was flat – the day had turned cloudy and snow was moving in. To compensate for flat light on a color subject, I depend on rich color saturation here to pick up the slack. I enhanced this image in Photoshop to re-create the same sense of depth, richness, and contrast of coloration I saw with my own eyes.

Cobh was the last port the ill-fated Titanic would ever see. In this yellow building, now home to a bistro, passengers checked in and then walked out the back door to a pier, where they boarded a tender which took them to the Titanic anchored off shore. For many of them, this place was the last land they would ever walk upon. This image would make little sense to anyone without the context I have just provided. It would just be a picture of an Irish pub capitalizing on the name of a doomed ship. Yet with such context, this image that carries profound implications. In 1912 this building was the Cobh (then known as Queenstown) office of White Star Lines. It might have been preserved as memorial museum, but instead has become a place of revelry. Its present owners have painted the building bright yellow, a primary color often associated with beauty, lightheartedness and pleasure, no doubt to attract more patrons. Brightly colored flowers are placed along its walls and over its door. Colors can be seen as symbols, and here we have a symbolic incongruity. Bright, flamboyant colors are used to mask a building with a grim past, one that trades on tragedy. I stress the incongruous sign out front as well. For days after the tragedy, newsboys, looking very much like this one, hawked papers on the streets of London and New York. Their papers told of massive deaths. Today, this “newspaper boy” tell us the Titanic has become a bistro.

Beijing's Forbidden City has nearly 9,000 rooms, which housed 10,000 people. Some are embellished with lavishly painted ceilings such as this one. This picture depends entirely upon color for meaning. The colors are muted, far from the brilliant blues, reds, and yellows photographers hunger for. Yet they are still exquisite. Gold, brown, pale blue – the palette of the 15th Century. They are arrayed upon a complex network of interlocking beams and posts that have held the building firmly in place since the Ming Dynasty. These colors, as much as anything else, have captured the flavor of that time for me.

Shanghai's 19th Century Confucian Temple is being restored to its original condition. A blue tarp and bamboo scaffold make a temporary backdrop for the shrine's cherished statue of Confucius. I was attracted to the scene by the blue tarp – while scuffed and soiled, it is still cool and serene, and an ideal counter-color to the drab gray statue and the neutral scaffolding. I often look for strong contrasts in color to intensify a subject and help express meaning. I’ve found it here.

Texture can bring color to life as much as light. In this image, made in full in shade, the colors intensified not by light but by the play of texture upon them.

The contrasting green and tan coloring of these interwoven live and dead palm fronds are made more vital by the flow of rhythmic texture within them, as are the muted orange shingles on the exterior wall of the Villa Montezuma itself. The palm fronds reflected in the three windows have no color in them all, helping the lace curtains and the stained glass add context for meaning. Images such as this show us that color can work just as well under overcast skies or in the shade as it can in full sunlight.

Photographs of shaded colors can often work as well or better than richly illuminated colors. They are subtler, and won’t compete with the subject of the picture. In this image of a floral tribute to an important figure in Mexico’s history, the colors of the wreaths are muted in comparison to the sun-splashed leaves on the overhead trees. The red base of the statue, which stretches across the entire picture, is also toned down by the shade, as are those gilded letters on the pedestal. Perhaps the most obscure part of the image is the figure of the man himself, who almost disappears into the trees above him. And that is exactly what I wanted this image to speak of – tributes always mean more to the living than the dead.

Metal siding is common in Valparaiso, Chile's primary port city. A rusty building, at first blush, may not seem to be a vividly colored subject, but it is incongruous, and it does seem to offer a neutral field for color contrast. And that is why the colors works so well together in this image. The more you look at the rust, the more the variation of color within the rust becomes evident. The rust itself ranges from brown to red, with even some yellow thrown in. Then superimpose an array of casually arranged laundry upon this rusty facade -- red, yellow, blue, purple, and white -- plus a variety of window shades, a few plants and other window decorations, and pretty soon the picture is a vividly swirling mass of colors competing for attention. I noticed relatively few of these colorful details as I made this picture out of the window of a restaurant on top of one of Valparaiso's famous hills. It was a very cloudy morning, the light was flat, and I was just hoping I would somehow find some colors that worked together on this rusting building just across the way. When I reviewed this picture on my liquid crystal display panel, I knew I what I had for the first time.

All of the primary colors – red, yellow, and blue – are present on this boldly painted gate before a beautifully restored house on one of the Caribbean’s most prosperous islands. The light is as bold as the color – the interplay of light and shadow enriches the color with a three dimensional effect. Just as the peeling primary colors in the previous image symbolized the fury of nature, the perfect condition of these sleek colors tell us that whoever lives here appreciates beauty and has the means to maintain it. All of which provides a good metaphor for Willemstad itself.

Color is the most important element in this photograph as well. There are only two colors here – the brownish statue and the softly shadowed blue wall behind it. The sculpture portrays a reflective mother carrying a child and the blue wall gives such reflection a cool context. La Boca is a popular neighborhood in Buenos Aires, largely because of the primary colors used to paint its buildings. I made this image because of the color contrast and the flow of light and shadow on that color. Together, they give both art and setting a sense of place and purpose.

The kayak season must be over (or temporarily on hold) at this Costa Rican beach resort. These stacked plastic kayaks had a melancholy look to them, making me wonder when were they last used? I moved in on one end of the stack, and underexposed the image to make the shadows surrounding the kayaks even darker than they were. This underexposure enriched the primary colors of the kayaks, and also emphasized the dirt on them, along with a scattering of dead leaves. Despite the gaiety of their colors, the kayaks seem to be at least temporarily forlorn and forgotten. It is the incongruity between the promise of the rich primary coloration and the obvious symbols of disuse that express my feelings about this scene.

Punta Arenas is a city of colorful tin roofs, and to capture their essence, I originally planned to find colors with the most startling contrast. This green and pink building, now a museum, seemed to offer a prefect subject, but not in the way I had first thought. The contrast here is not between the colors. Rather, it is caused by the interplay of light and shadow on those colors. This image powerfully underscores the effect of light on color. There is ample use of pink on this building, not only on the roofs but on the trim as well. Yet when seen in deep shadow, this vibrant color loses it’s energy and merges quietly into the green siding. The two pink roofs, however, are splashed with sunlight, creating striking highlights that dominate the image and tell the story.

The facades of the restored 17th and 18th century Dutch colonial buildings in this West Indies harbor town have been deliberately painted in contrasting vivid colors to catch the eye and provide character. I did not wish to photograph them only for their appearance. If I had wanted such a picture, I could have brought any number of post cards showing such scenes. I had noticed the powerful cloud shapes that often occur over oceans during the day, and hoped that one might be in the sky over Willemstad at dusk. I envisioned a picture where the cloud, too, would carry color, as well as the buildings. At day’s end, I got my cloud, and a very powerfully shaped cloud at that. The warmth of the late afternoon sun is reflected on both the cloud and on the facades, and the rich blue sky sets them off perfectly. The scale incongruity between the big cloud and the small buildings makes their coloration even more effective.

I was in a bus, which was stopped at a light on a busy street in Lima. As I looked out of the window, I saw a yellow building facade, yellow ads, and even a yellow ice cream dispenser out there on the street. A man stood on the sidewalk reading a paper, oblivious to all of this color behind him. Amazingly, he was wearing a yellow shirt. It was too good to pass up. Even though it meant shooting through a smudged bus window, I pressed my lens to the glass to avoid reflections and hoped for the best. I was quite happy with the resulting picture. As a primary color, yellow is very popular in Latin America. Peru is no exception. What we see here is a society expressing itself in color, and much of it happens to be yellow.