Take control of colour
Decide on the perfect balance of hues for realistic, attractive scenes
Colour is arguably the main appeal of the golden hours for many photographers, as the strong lighting has unique saturating properties which introduce weighty, rich tones to the landscape. However, on occasion this character can have a detrimental effect on the natural hues in a scene, by flooding it with dominating yellows, oranges and reds. Where these are present, there is also a risk of colours becoming oversaturated and out of gamut, with clipping in one or more channels, resulting in loss of fine details. While this can sometimes be recovered (see 12 Essential Editing Techniques on page 44) capturing a good balance of colours at the shooting stage is always preferable.
Since colour and brightness are closely linked, exposing for the highlights is always a first step. Once a balanced exposure has been calculated, attention can be turned to selecting a white balance, which generates a good distribution of colour values. Shooting in RAW format is advisable, since these files offer a much greater scope for colour modification. Sunrise and sunset are two times of the day at which ‘correct’ colour is rarely the most impactful. When set to automatic white balance, most cameras will attempt to neutralise the strong warm colours, producing a shot with too much cyan or blue – an unattractive and unrealistic representation of the scene. ‘Good’ colour in this context refers to that which covers the entire range of those available, in the scene in front of the camera. This can be challenging to achieve, because no single white balance is capable of rendering both extremes of the Kelvin scale. While
Shade may reflect the strong golden tones, the cooler but equally common hues will be under-represented. Meanwhile, Fluorescent will produce an obviously artificial cool colour shift. In these cases, the photographer should
consider taking a custom white balance reading, adjusting temperature directly rather than using a preset white balance, or merging multiple files during processing. If shooting JPEGs, turn on white balance bracketing to shoot a burst of images with varying temperatures. Always check for ill-represented colour at the shooting stage, with a view to planning your processing strategy.