A method is provided for controlling one or more lighting devices to generate a dynamic light effect based on an image. A first area in the image is selected based on first selection criteria (e.g. object recognition). Within this first area, a sequence of sub-areas (260, 262, 264) are selected based on second selection criteria (e.g. zooming in to a recognized object). Color values are extracted from each sub-area and the one or more lighting devices are controlled based on the extracted color values.