When did you first understand the importance of color to the photographic process?

I came to understand colour when I was growing up because I loved art and would spend countless hours drawing and painting with acrylics which was reinforced when in the darkroom at the local Kodak factory. It didn’t stop there either, during my architectural training, colour psychology became second nature so I use it everywhere I can!

My advice is to own a good colour management screen, calibrate regularly and profile your camera. I cannot stress this enough to all aspiring photographers! How else will you be able to gauge and represent the colours you want to convey in your images?

The main benefits are that you save a huge amount of time and money when reproducing your images. The biggest gain is the time you save during post production, especially if like me you capture large lavish weddings which tend to be over 12 hours long meaning there are more images than normal.

With the continual introduction and development of multiple camera systems and the algorithms that go with them, its very important to be able to reliably reproduce the colours as they should be, especially in multiple camera scenarios. What really got my attention is how much the same camera systems vary between themselves. Camera profiling is vital or else you’ll never be able achieve consistency within your own images.

Camera systems are becoming ever sophisticated as are the various mediums in which we can display our images, so a simple system of controlling and managing colours within our own workflow like the X-Rite systems are crucial and will continue to be more so.

Colour psychology is an integral part of what we do and the impact our images have; so if we cannot reproduce the colours as they should be then we lose impact and therefore effect.

Colour management saves you time (which in any business is money) and it saves you from lots of trial & error and guesswork which costs money, especially in professional printing.