September might be a great time to celebrate the last of the year’s verdant vibe with a nod to those archival photos of mine that lean into green. Many have been waiting long for their chance to wind up on this blog and I have wondered why. Do I typically photograph a more subdued palette—or a different palette—and this is why I leave out the green? Or are predominantly green photos especially difficult to get to look right? It turns out that both things are true.
As to the first, my tendencies are in evidence all over this blog. I go for a soothing image, clutter-free and often quite quiet in terms of color. Cacophonies are not my thing. When green shows up, it’s usually on its own—typically an illustration for a text piece and not part of a collection of photographs.
The second idea is interesting but elusive and concerns both the physics of color vision and the mechanics of color photography or digital color photography in particular. In simple terms, green fields in images are often oversaturated and excessively yellow, but tricky to adjust, especially when skin tones are also present. Enter “green photos difficult to edit” into your search engine and you will discover that this is a popular inquiry. Maybe you will also have more luck than I understanding the physics and mechanics involved.
I don’t have much more to say now, because this is one of those posts that’s all about the images. The writing is just background noise—a word of introduction, a checkbox ticked, pure phatic function.
Below you’ll find my greenlit greens, color-balanced to a great extent but inconclusively so. (Basically, every time I look at these, I feel that the hue, saturation, and value of both the yellow and green in each image are still not quite where I want them. I’ve adjusted and adjusted, and then I’ve adjusted some more to make everything more or less match. The green ones, I find, are always a work in progress.)
All photos taken by the author between 2018 and 2024 with either the Fujifilm X-T20 or the Fujifilm X-T5 and one of three Fujinon fast prime lenses. If you want the beta on any of these, feel free to ask.