Pixel Darkroom Photography

This image is “colored” in a special way. For those of you not familiar with using gels and working with the white balance (WB) of the camera, this is an interesting exercise. Tungsten light looks very warm to the camera as well as to the naked eye. Our brain is used to adjusting the information to us but the camera doesn’t. So the camera needs to be told that the image is lit by tungsten light so that it “cools” it off.

However, if the image is not lit by tungsten light, the camera’s white balance cools it so much that it looks blue to our eyes. In order to create the effect below, I set the camera to the tungsten white balance and lit myself with a flash that had a 1/1 CTO (color temperature orange) gel AND a 1/8 CTO gel. The 1/1 CTO gel was to create the tungsten light that I mentioned below, which would have brought yours truly to a neutral light (sort of day light, or white, if you wish) and the other 1/8 CTO gel to warm up, yours truly, (who could have use the warmth) and give it a little bit of skin color. The flash was triggered with Pocket Wizards (radio triggers) and the light shape was modified with a coroplast snoot, which is something to direct the light straight at the subject and prevent it from “spilling” or contaminating anything else. Here’s Day 289.