Glamour Photographer Rolando Gomez recently wrote about using a simple white balance technique he used on his photoblog www.lensdiaries.com to add vibrant color to the ocean and sky in the background of his imagery. By white balancing the camera and light source to a specific color, anything illuminated in that color will appear normal while the rest of the shot will become saturated in the complementary color. |
American Idol's Amy Davis is illuminated by a studio flash covered with a Rosco Green CalColor Gel.
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White Balanced To Green. |
For example, to achieve the vivid magenta background achieved in this Rolando Gomez image, the camera is white balanced to the green light created with Rosco gels placed on Rolando's flash.
The green gel remains on the flash during the photo session so that the subject appears normal and everything else, in this case the sky & water in the background, has a brilliant magenta cast. Because magenta is the opposite color of green in the spectrum, the camera, when custom white balanced to green, will add the complementary magenta color to anything not illuminated by the green flash.
This technique applies to anyone shooting with a digital camera that has custom white balancing capabilities, including: SLR, HDSLR, Video and HD Video. Having the power to change the color of the sky and background in the camera before capturing the shot saves countless hours of postproduction.
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