Egidio works with colours this week – please visit his colourful site for more inspiration!

Complementary colors are those that sit opposite each other on the colour wheel. Using them in your photography or painting creates the best colour contrast, and your images will pop. For example, red and green, magenta and green, yellow and violet, orange and blue, and so on. And just like the color wheel transitions from one shade to another, you can use nearly opposite colors to make your images stand out. Naturally, the best results will be with the exact opposites.

Soft colours pop in their own soft way…

– and strong colours don’t need any further presentation. Then there is red and green, where red is THE chosen colour of Swedish old houses, farms and cottages –

– naturally with a different hue and intensity than in flowers. Green is not the most natural combination with red in our houses though, it is white.

Do you have favourite combos? I guess I have yellow and violet – especially as we can find those two in one single flower – melampyrum nemorosum – the Night and Day flower. When I saw her for the first time, in 1973, it was immediate love. Surely a Swedish, modest wild flower could not look like that? Ever since then she holds an honourable place in my Midsummer bouquet.

She often stands in the forest, in shadowy places but close to the sea. So I cannot find her in my own forest, only close to our summer house. A truly shy beauty.

These colours look great in abstracts as well as in carnival outfits. They simply cry out: SEE ME, here I am!

Walking home late, the sky above this beautiful boardwalk in Nice kept flashing its carnival colours hroughout the night.

Finally, I guess you know I love poppies! Meconopsis betonicifolia – the blue mountain poppy – is an old love of mine…but, I don’t have it in my own garden as I don’t think I will manage it. It is very expensive and fragile, so I would hate to see it die.

Last week, Ritva got us to shoot from above. I enjoyed it very much – just as I believe you did. There were so many interesting posts!

This week, Egidio asks us to share images with complementary colors that create interest and make your photos stand out. Don’t forget to use the “lens-artists” hashtag when creating your post so we can easily find it in the Reader. Looking forward to seeing you here!

Next week, Tina returns with her first new challenge for the year. It will go live at noon EST in the USA. Tune in to find out another exciting challenge. Please see this page to learn more about the Lens-Artists Challenge and its history.