What comes to mind when you think of the color red? Like all colors, red symbolizes and brings to mind a plethora of emotions. For our first creative exercise of the year, Kristina and I decided to finally tackle a bit of color theory, and see how we intentionally use red in our toy photos.

Like all colors, we associate red with a wide range of objects and feelings. Fire, blood, anger, love, heat, danger, passion, sex… Red is used to attract our attention, and in some cultures represents luck and prosperity.

Here are some examples of how I’ve used red in my photography. What do you see?

How do you use red in your toy photography? What can the use of color tell us about an artist? We attempt to answer those questions and more on today’s episode!

Our images

  • by James
  • by Kristina

Listener images discussed in this episode

Thanks to everyone who joined us and used red for their own images! As always we got an array of impressive entries from the community. Below are the photos we brought up during the episode. You can check out the rest here on Instagram, or under the #tp_red and #tp_tagteam hashtags on MeWe.

  • by @spideygoeshygge
  • by @spideygoeshygge
  • by @joecow
  • by @adamfigurephotography
  • by @the_aphol

I also want to give a big shoutout to Matthew Wyjad, who helped promote the red theme throughout January and ran his own little giveaway on MeWe. I appreciate the support!

Next exercise

For our next exercise, we’re going to photograph movement, in honor of this month’s theme on MeWe. While we can’t always coordinate our episodes with the community challenge, we’re happy the stars aligned this month.

Since there has been some confusion about the themes on the podcast and how/if they tie into the monthly MeWe challenges, we’re going to skip the podcast-specific hashtags going forward. Think of these episodes more as creative workshops than “challenges.” Our goal here is to find a topic or technique that sounds interesting, try it, and talk about it on the show. We encourage listeners to do the same and tag us in their photos; we’ll use them as examples during our discussion.

If you’d like to show us your photo for the chance to be discussed, you can tag us @thereeljames23 and @kalexanderson on Instagram, by name on MeWe, or email your photo to us directly at toyphotographypod@gmail.com.

Thanks for listening!

-James

How do you use red in your photography? Join the discussion in the comments below!