Last week I wrote about how finding the right lighting is essential to a well thought out photo. This week, the topic of lighting slides into White Balance and how choosing this setting that you probably didn’t even know your digital camera has can make all the difference in the lighting of your photos.
What is White Balance?
White balance basically defines the temperature of a photo. How warm or cool the lighting is. For example, the warm golden tones of a sunset, to the neutral studio portrait photoshoot, to the cool tones of a white scenic snow landscape.
Why this is important
Choosing the white balance is important so you can take more picturesque photos. You can avoid the color cast of some photos and capture the true colors of a photograph by paying attention to the white balance.
How to find White Balance
Digital cameras usually come with Auto White Balance (AWB) and will try to adjust the AWB of a photo by automatically looking for the white space in the picture. The camera doesn’t always do this correctly so it will create a color cast in the photo based off of the present light source.
How to over ride Auto White Balance
First, you have to judge the source of lighting for your photograph. Is it a nice sunny day, is it cloudy outside, are you in a shaded area? Then you can now go into the menu or settings of your digital camera and choose the white balance preset that best suits the light source of your photo.
For example, this assignment for module 5 asked me to take a picture outside in all of the White Balance presets available. It was a cloudy and hot day in Florida so naturally, I began with the Cloudy preset. I also used AWB, Shade, Florescent, Incandescent, Direct sunlight, and Flash. Here is an example of what the assignment asked for.
How do you think they came out? The photos that came out crisper true to color are taken with AWB, Daylight and Cloudy presets. The other photos that came out with a blue and violet color cast are done with the Florescent and Incandescent presets.
I’ve definitely learned how to pay more attention to the lighting in these last two modules. I can know which setting to use based on the light source to find the best photo to tell the best story possible.