Psychology of Colors | Salt Lake Conceptual Portrait Photographer

By Wendy Hurst November 13, 2014

color series: yellow

Before I did any research, I started in my closet. On a shelf in my sewing room closet I pulled out any fabric I could find with bold colors that stood out to me. Blue, yellow, red. I threw them in the air, shook them in my hands, stretched them as far as they would go. Then I went to my sketch book (aka, the "Paper" app on my trusty iPad 2). I wasn't going to sketch what the fabric looked like. I wanted to draw how each made me feel.

With each color I associated a few words to describe what that color meant to me and used stick figures to roughly illustrate them.

After research, I grasped unexpected insight into my personality and current state of mind that, as I prepared these final images, became very personal.

To share one: I chose the richest yellow-gold fabric I could find in my stash. According to this website I found about color psychology, "yellow is the color of the mind and the intellect", while "gold is the color of success, achievement, and triumph". Mixing the two together and referring back to the words I used to describe my feelings about that color before my research, I learned that in my life right now these things feel rich, heavy, and abundant. In the last few months I've experienced a deeper sense of creativity than ever before, as if I just woke up from a deep sleep that lasted for ages to find the world around me is the same…but different.

I could share more about how I developed the mood of these images, but in the end it doesn't matter what these colors mean to me.

What matters is what they mean to you.