Aerial Perspective in Landscapes

Aerial perspective or atmospheric perspective refers to the effect the atmosphere has on the appearance of an object as it is viewed from a distance, the appearance being its color and value.

In my last post, I talked about the curtains of water particles that inhabit the atmosphere and how these curtains change the color of the sky as it approaches the horizon. The same effect holds true for landscape subjects in the distance. As colors recede from the eye over terrain, they become cooler, with the exception of white. A cooler color means a color that tends to contain blue, while a warm color is made up of reds and yellows. In this picture, the trees in the distance appear cooler in color and change to blue in the far distance.

Color Changes

The greater the distance and the more atmosphere, the bluer the distant objects become. As your eye travels, you will notice that the color yellow disappears first, including all of the yellows that mix with other colors such as yellow green, browns, and oranges.

A warm yellow green in the foreground will transition to an emerald green and then a cool blue-green.

In this picture, the closest greens contain more yellow, and as we look further, the yellows dissipate, until the greens in the distance become a blue-green. The sky at the horizon is also lighter and changes to a gray-rose in color.

Reds will prevail slightly longer than yellow, before they too succumb to blue. That’s why mountains tend toward a warm purple before they change in their farthest distance to blue. Atmospheric particles affect the value of a color as well as the temperature in a landscape. You can see in this photo of a mountain range, the transition from green to blue-green, to purple-blue to blue.

Value Changes

All colors will become lighter as they recede, the lightness tempered by the prevailing sky color. As I said last week, whites tend to become slightly warmer and darker as they recede, due to the atmosphere.

 As you would expect, objects close by are deeper in color, their shapes are sharper and the values are more distinct.

It’s important to note that a flat ground plane is always going to be darker than the sky (except when snow is involved), but never as dark as the upright planes such as trees and buildings.