Life – Chapter 1 “My Story with Color”

Every year I am handed the kids school pictures. I glance at them and share my best fatherly charming comment “Oh, how handsome!!, These look great” and up they went to the photo album.

Until one year, when I looked at the pictures, I found myself doing a double take. I was like “Daaaaaamn!!! THESE PICTURES LOOK AWESOME!!” But why? I had no idea and that’s when I decided to find out.

Well, what I discovered was magical, so here it goes.

If I casually asked you what is the opposite of white, I am sure and without any hesitation you would say black. That is absolutely correct. Well, guess what? In the same fashion every color in the color spectrum also have an opposite color. And all of that is represented in a diagram called the color wheel.

So as you can see in the color wheel, the opposite of blue is yellow and the opposite of red is Cyan while the opposite of green is Magenta.

An opposite color means if I would like to make an image more red, all I will need to do is subtract the color cyan and vice versa. At the matter of fact, this is exactly how our eyes function.

So the reason the kids school pictures looked amazing that year is the fact that my kids were wearing brown which happened to be the exactly opposite to the sky blue color in the background. Not only that, their skin tone color happens to also be in the same range. Not to mention the matching ties with some blue in them.

The more amazing discovery is what I noticed next. The whole world around us was designed with that in mind. If we look at the deserts pinned against the blue sky, or the hills and the mountains.

And yes there is a reason why the beach looks so peaceful and beautiful.

They are all exactly opposite in the color scale. How about the forests and gardens? There is a reason why trees are green and most flowers are red, purple and orange.

Or why fruits change to an opposite color when they ripen. As if they are calling us to say, we are ready. Color contrast bring out the beauty in everything.

So next time you want something to pop out, just make it opposite to it’s surroundings. There is a reason why a brown bag goes so well with a blue dress.