The Photographer's Eye: Graphic Guide

THEME

Akha village, Thai-Burmese border, 1981

A color theme covers a number of images, and so works well for any picture story because it helps to hold them together and give them a sense of unity. It means working with colors that have similar hues, and on our color cylinder that means they lie on the same zone of the circle. Here, I’ve highlighted it by cutting a wedge out, like a slice of cake. The word “theme” sounds intentional, and while it doesn’t have to be (you could simply select it from what you already shot), in this case it was. These pictures were part of the same assignment as the “looking through” shot on pages 90–91, and after ...