The pastel colour aesthetic can feel airy or whimsical. Famously used in Wes Anderson’s films, it can also be found in certain sunlit photographs taken at unusual locations.
Those types of images may have significant colour grading applied, or they may have none. They can be shot on film or digitally. Here, I’ll focus on film flow though you should be able to apply this guide to any photographic medium. We’ll cover film types, exposure settings, scene selection, scanning, and colour grading.
I’ll begin by showing you how to get this effect in a studio. I will then discuss street or natural environment photography, the challenges of finding suitable scenes, and a few ways to overcome them.
TL; DR: Pastel compositions in photography use predominantly tinted (i.e., light or high-value) colours. They can be warm or cool, saturated or desaturated, and their effectiveness is not bound by colours alone.
IRL, pastel is a powdered pigment held together by a binder. It can be oily, like a crayon, or dry, like chalk. Pastels and pastel artwork began production in the 15th century. We’ve been using this stuff for over six hundred years!
Robert Huffstutter via Flickr.
Pastel is a challenging medium. You have to get the colours right on the first try or start over as they can’t be covered up.
When it comes to photography, “pastels” are still challenging. You have to understand scene selection, light, and some editing techniques. There are presets you can try, but they may make your portfolio look bland if you aren’t careful.
The colours in actual pastel works are diverse and sometimes unexpected. For example, the above pastel by Robert Huffstutter shows light, vibrant, cool colours. This is already divergent from the repetitive results a pastel-themed Lightroom preset will give you, but there’s still more to consider.
“abu dhabi skyline, pastel on board” by Evan Bench via Flickr.
Warm, orangy pastels like Evan Bench’s “abu dhabi skyline, pastel on board” use different colours with the same effect. Evan’s pastel has less white than Robert’s, yet both works can be unmistakenly identified as pastels. The chalky texture is part of it. If I were to blur those images, they would lose their “pastel” appearance.
Certain film scans can have a similar texture — but that alone is not enough to create the “pastel” look. The colours must be right. Besides, pastels can be used to create incredibly detailed images that may show very little texture when seen from afar.
The below pastel by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, drawn in 1771, has all sorts of colours thanks to the author’s blending techniques. In fact, this image looks like it was made with oil paint and brushes.
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. Self Portrait, 1771, pastel on paper. Via Wikimedia Commons.
So how can we make images created within a completely different medium to give off a “pastel” appearance? Let’s look at a few examples and see if we can find a pattern.
Wes Anderson’s movies are a good example of a photographic medium often described as having a pastel look. This book makes an excellent attempt at defining his visual style. However, Mr. Anderson’s extensive portfolio doesn’t seem to be limited by the pastel aesthetic alone. He uses it often but not always.
(I won’t analyze Wes’ diverse use of colour specifically, but I will cover his framing and composition techniques in this guide.)
The pattern is a little easier to notice when looking at the works of photographers deliberately aiming at it. There’s still a variety of approaches; some of their images look like Robert Huffstutter’s drawing, and others look like Evan Bench’s pastels. But after flipping through a few hundred photos, a pattern emerges. Here’s what I gathered:
Pastel compositions in photography use predominantly tinted¹ (i.e., light or high-value) colours. They can be warm or cool, saturated or desaturated, and their effectiveness is not bound by colours alone. Pastel-themed photographs may have primary colours and dark, saturated shadows; however, those elements are typically complementary and take up less space than the rest.
¹ —In this article, I’m using “tint” to describe the effect of mixing white (and not any other colour) with a pure colour (hue colour that does not have any grey or black mixed in) to create a lighter colour. This is a definition used by colour theorists.
Examples.Teresa Freitas creates many pastel-coloured photographs, and Maria Marie has a fantastic selection of images here. Both photographers use tinted colours and low saturation. Andria Darius Pancrazi’s portfolio on designboom captures the same aesthetic while also adding a limited palette of darker colours. George Byrne has medium-high contrast in his photographs that gives his images a more grounded appearance. Portuguese photographer Sejkko also has tinted, often saturated colours in his images juxtaposed with mundane-looking elements like grey roads.
You can find more examples of pastel-themed photography on this Pinterest board. Please let me know if I missed anyone you like!
Primary additive colours (red, green, blue) transformed into their pastel counterparts by adding tint (lightness). Paired with analogous counterparts for context.
Unfortunately, while trying to replicate the effect those photographers achieved, I quickly discovered that moving the Lightness slider to the right or simply overexposing colour film does not necessarily create pastel colours.
Exposure and editing techniques can make a difference, but there’s more to those pastel-coloured photographs. Adding tint/lightness and playing around with saturation often fails because there may be too many things going on in the photograph. Making some colours lighter can make others disappear or look unnatural whereas extreme changes can give the image a deep-fried look.
Yet, some photos need little or no editing. For example, the shot of a sliced red grapefruit at the very top of this article was not colour-graded. The fruit, the backing paper, and the light created the pastel palette; all they needed was to be captured on film from the right angle and scanned.
Shot on Lomography Lomochrome Color’92.
The only thing missing in that shot of red grapefruit is hard shadows. Hard, uncluttered shadows can help create a painterly effect by concealing depth. For example, while the portrait of me above won’t necessarily fit the pastel aesthetic, I think it demonstrates the hard shadows’ painterly effect pretty well.
That portrait was taken on Lomochrome Color’92, a low dynamic range/high contrast film. If Betty had used a lower contrast film, like Kodak Portra 400, but kept the highlights at the same level, there would be a lot more information in the shadows, which is another defining property of pastel-styled photographs.
Long, hard, open shadows are an example of a visual device that isn’t specific to colour. They can produce a painted or graphic effect on black and white film just as well. In fact, there are several cues that you can use as a photographer to create an impactful, believable pastel aesthetic.
But before this seemingly simple task becomes any more complicated, let’s begin by observing how light interacts with objects in a controlled environment. Once that becomes clear, I’ll move on to film choices, scanning, and editing techniques and then the outdoor scenes as they may be the trickiest ones to get right.
