Seeing Red: Why This Colour Will Not Let Me Go

Liverpool, England. 2022

There is something about the colour red that grabs me every time I lift a camera. It does not matter if I am photographing a rusting barn door, a child’s plastic tricycle, or the glow of brake lights in a foggy street. Red insists on being seen. It demands attention. And I keep giving it mine.

I have wondered why. Red is not a subtle colour. It does not whisper. It shouts. Maybe that is what draws me to it.

Its the colour you put as far away as possible from a bride in her group wedding photographs, as the red dress always dominated over and above the white dress.

Its refusal to fade into the background. In the landscapes and overcast skies I often shoot, red becomes a kind of punctuation.

A warning. A heartbeat. It is emotional shorthand, anger, love, danger, urgency, warmth, all in one hue. And in a photograph it becomes a visual anchor, rooting the eye and creating tension.

I do not necessarily seek red out. But when I am reviewing images, I notice how often red makes the final cut. It is the scarf in a crowd, the postbox in the rain, the chapel pew against bare stone.

Red shows up as a story, a fragment of life that breaks through the muted tones of everyday scenes. And in documentary work especially, where emotion matters more than perfection, red often becomes the thread that pulls the image together.

I think that is why I keep returning to it. Red is not just a colour. It is an interruption. It asks questions. It unsettles. And in a medium built on stillness, that kind of energy is a gift.

Caernarfon, Wales. 2022