The newest addition to my One Frame Movie series; a series which hasn’t been put on ice, but which I’m only extending if the opportunity presents itself as part of a non-specific photo shoot. Here, Jo posed for me in the stairwell to an underground car park during last Sunday’s Swiss Strobist practical day.

The great lighting was created using a technique I came across at a workshop held by David Hobby in Geneva last year. Daylight is essentially blue, so setting the white balance of your camera to a lower setting (“Kelvin”) than regular daylight will exaggerate the blue tones. (In this example, the white balance was set to 2,500 K; as low as my camera can go.) Underexposing the daylight will then further enhance the saturation of the colour.

Regular light from a flash gun would also have been turned blue by the camera’s white balance setting, so I added 2 warming CTO gels to the flash, which was positioned at the top of the stairwell and focused on Jo using one of my home-made snoots.

2 responses to “Out of the blue”

  1. Victor avatar
    Victor

    Lovely shot and thanks for describing the technique.

    I think you meant to say you set the WB of the camera to a warmer tone (e.g. Tungsten). Confusingly, a warmer tone is actually a lower colour temperature.

    1. Mark Howells-Mead avatar

      Thanks Victor: to clarify, the white balance was set as low as it would go: 2,500K. As you’ve pointed out, this is referred to as “hot” in terms of camera white balance, which confuses the hell out of me.

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