Tag: Lighting

Posted on

The challenge of colour outdoors

Red head model wearing a dress in a period room, she his lit from the window and is looking to our right.
Leica M10, 50mm Summilux-M 1.4 ASPH

In the studio getting the colour right is fairly straightforward.

Once the lighting and exposure is all correct it’s a simple step of selecting a grey card or colour checker card and setting the white balance but what about mixed light or outdoors.

Colour Checker being used.

Here at the image on the top of this page we have balanced for the outdoor light and we are also using a little bit of fill in flash also at a daylight colour balance. These leaves the lamp giving a warm glow.

Outdoors things get far harder.

Model stood in wheat field, she is topless and just wearing a skirt. Her hands are covering her breasts.

Now here in this image we have the golden hue of the light from the wheat and a slightly blue tinted over cast sky. The colour can be balanced a lot easier then some out door pictures.

Young blond model sat on the grass in a graveyard. She is wearing a sunhat and pretty print dress looking towards the camera.

It’s when you start to get green hues in the picture where it gets difficult. Sometimes you just have to correct as best as you can and accept that if you correct for one thing then something else will not look correct.