Colour through the day: part one
Work with intense warm light when the sun is low in the sky
What makes colour photography so fascinating is that the available hues on display change throughout the day – from the deep blues of early pre-dawn, to the stark, top-down light of midday, to the fiery reds and oranges of sunset. By staying at one location and shooting it throughout the day, even with an unchanging composition it is possible for you to capture completely unique images at different moments.
To capture this plethora of colour correctly, it helps to understand what is happening to the light as the sun changes position, and how this affects the way in which the camera perceives the scene in front of it. This can often be far more complex than it first appears. It can be easy to assume what camera settings to choose based on what we can see with our eyes, but translating the visible colours into digital format takes some additional insight into light behaviour.
At sunrise, just before the sun appears above the horizon and a scene is flooded with golden light, it may seem that there are only low colour temperature values present. However, if you bias your white balance to these alone, you will often notice your shadow areas becoming too cold, with a similar effect higher up in the sky. At these times the gradient of colour is steep, moving away from the horizon, so it is important to correctly balance the warm and cool tones.
It is important to note how different lighting will impact subjects. For example, when shooting brightly coloured flowers, be careful how low-Kelvin light impacts the integrity of the hues seen in the digital image. The warmth of the light can push some colours out of range, causing individual channel clipping, colour ‘bleeding’, and a loss of detail.