Step BY step BLUE SKY THINKING

Change your colour balance and add a gel to banish grey skies

01 CHANGE WHITE BALANCE

Go into the Shooting menu (or press Q on the back of your camera to open the Quick Control menu) and go into the White balance options. Change the setting to Tungsten light.

02 FEELING BLUE

When you take a photo or activate Live View, you will see that everything has gone blue… including your subject! We need to add an effect light to make our subject the right colour.

03 GELLED LIGHT

Affix the orange gel to your light source. A colour temperature orange (CTO) gel is best, as it is properly colour balanced; a cheaper gel will work, but may need additional tweaks in post.

04 MODIFY THE LIGHT

The light that comes out of a barefaced source such as a Speedlite flashgun or strobe light will probably be too strong, so modify it with an umbrella or a diffusion cap to get the results that you want.

05 PLAY IT COOL

With a CTO gel the skin tones will be more accurate, but a cheaper gel that isn’t accurately colour-balanced might leave your subject’s skin looking a little too cool – perhaps even too cool for school.

06 COLOUR CORRECTION

You can correct these skin tones in a package like Photoshop – and then tweak any other colours that are still too cool. Adjusting the colour balance sliders should do the trick though.