James Paterson splits shadows into bold hues with a clever lighting trick, and teaches the fundamentals of color theory

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The colored shadow look is an old-school technique you’re just as likely to see in a science museum as in a photo, but is becoming increasingly popular as photographers explore optical in-camera effects. As well as being a vibrant way to shoot a portrait, it’s a fascinating demo of color theory.

To split our shadows into different colors, we need three separate light sources, colored red, green and blue. When working in combination – as we see in the light hitting the subject here – the three colors form normal white light. This is down to the concept of additive color mixing, where red, green and blue light combine to form white. But when our three lights are spaced apart, something very interesting happens.

Each light creates its own shadow, just as any normal light would. But the shadows take on different colors – and they’re not necessarily the colors we started with.