Camera & Craft

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Chapter Seven: Your Color in Control

Shift Your Image

    For the “Make the Wrong White Balance Choice” exercise in Chapter 1, we explored the notion of flip-flopping the “right” color setting to create dramatic changes. In this exercise, we’ll see how adding warmth or coolness in small, bracketed increments can create more subtle changes.

    Two for One

    Find a scene you can photograph under two different light sources: daylight and tungsten. Landscapes, portraits and still-life images are good choices for this one. It’ll help if there’s either a neutral tone or a skin tone in your image to give you a reliable frame of reference.

    If you want some inspiration and direction for this exercise, try researching the urban landscape. Check out the photographs of William Eggleston, whose ability to see the American urban landscape is legendary. Wander the strip malls of suburbia or the seedy motels along an old state highway.1 Take this opportunity to do a photographic survey of the same place during the night and during the day.

    The Shoot

    1. Put your camera on Manual. Meter the scene and decide how to use time and DoF to interpret the image. Make sure your Picture Style is set to “Neutral.”
    2. Set your in-camera WB setting on K. The process for doing so will differ with each camera and usually involves selecting the “K” icon, which is part of the standard WB lineup.
    3. Dial in the specific Kelvin number. Some cameras place this function deep in the menu system, while others have it on a dedicated WB button.
    4. Do a WB bracket: For daylight temperatures, start at 8000K and move down in 500K intervals until you get to 4500K. For tungsten temperatures, start at 5500K and move by 500K intervals, all the way down to 2000K.2
    5. Pay attention to the image and histogram on the camera’s screen:
      • How does changing the WB setting affect the histogram?
      • Does changing the WB affect the exposure?

    Bonus: Include a neutral card in your image so that you have a true neutral reference. Place it in a spot where it’s fully lit and is in the key light.

    Review Your Images

    Ingest your WB brackets into Lightroom. You should definitely do this exercise on a calibrated and profiled monitor, since you’re hunting for subtle, but significant changes. For each set of bracketed shots, find the most neutral image. If you shot a neutral card, you can use the eyedropper to measure its value. We’re not trying to click-balance the image, so don’t click on it; just look for the image that has the closest matching numeric values for R, G and B.

    From that neutral image, move up and down through the bracket, looking for the first image that stands out as being significantly different. Remember, you’re looking for the image that influences the story you’re telling. Take note of the difference in Kelvin values between the most neutral image and the one you felt changed the story. Are the shifts large or small?

    This information can come in handy the next time you shoot. It will inform your work so that you can make a deliberate choice to warm or cool your image—and know whether you’re moving it dramatically or subtly. Yes, you can make these changes in post, but part of a photographer’s job is to express creative vision and do the work in front of the camera.

    1 Always tell someone when you’re out at a seedy motel—safety first!

    2 Some cameras have an odd relationship with Kelvin numbers—feel free to modify this test to match your system’s abilities.