Often I’m asked, “How do you saturate your backgrounds with color? Did you do this in Adobe Photoshop? First, other than minor tweaking of the blemishes in the image or model’s skin, I rarely use Adobe Photoshop to saturate my backgrounds—my rule of thumb, do all you can in the camera, don’t be an image-maker, be a photographer!
Saturation and even changing the color of the background, specifically the sky, is done with the use of gels, often at the cost of less than $6 (six-dollars) plus the fraction of time it takes to set the proper camera white-balance by the numbers or through custom, white-balance procedures according to your particular camera.
It’s an easy technique that comes from the old film days, now simplified with digital photography. With film we used filters in front of our lenses for this technique which forced the photographer to look through the colored filter attached to the lens—the filter would reduce the light entering the lens by at least one to two full F/stops while making everything look one color to the photographer during the shoot. While the reduction of light can act like a neutral-density filter, it’s an additional piece of glass that the image is captured from, thus some degradation. With digital you can shoot with a “clean lens,” no filter in front of it, thus sharper images and no solid-color view that can affect creativity.
If I want the blue in the sky to saturate, I start with a ROSCO 3/4 CTO gel, also known as number 3411 gel at your local theatrical supply house or camera pro store. I’ll place the gel over my flash unit, the stronger the flash, unit if you’re shooting during the main parts of the day, the better, because in order to overpower the sun with flash, power is essential (reference note: The “Sunny 16” or F/16 rule--on a bright sunny day, if your ISO is 100 and your shutter-speed is 1/100 then your F/stop is always 16.)
Once the gel is placed over the flash unit, on camera or portable battery pack studio lights--yes, I use Hensel Porty Premium Packs at 1200ws, then crank your power all the way up and get the correct exposure. My ISO I seet at 50 with on my Canon 5D, or ISO 100 on all others For the shutter-speed—I use the highest sync speed possible to start!
The idea is to overpower or match the sky--see F/16 rule above! So if my ISO is at 100 I’ll set my shutter-sync speed at 1/200 for my Canon 5D, or 1/160 on my Olympus E-volts. This technique ensures some extra darkness and saturation o the sky because my aperture is at least at F/16 because of the extra power from the flash. If I wait till sunset, then I’ll work at F/11 or F/8 as the sun sets. Once I’ve established my exposure, I’ll “drag” or slow-down the shutter-speed to lighten the sky and reduce saturation of color to my personal tastes. I don’t worry about the subjects because the duration of the flash is their shutter-speed. The flash intensity is what dictates their correct aperture for exposure.
Since I’m using a 3/4 CTO, which converts 5500 (K) Kelvin (flash) to 3200K (tungsten) I’m able to dial in the given number (3200K) without doing a custom white balance set-up. Because my style tends to be warmer, I actually bump up my white balance setting to 3700K. These are accurate, specific numbers found in your camera which makes it easy to use when saturating the sky various shades of blue.
Now sometimes I want to make the sky red, magenta or various different colors, so I’m forced to use the custom white balance procedures of my camera as most cameras don’t have Kelvin in ones, tens and variable numbers. Most cameras tend to have the more common numbers of the Kelvin scale and thus require custom white balancing for more untraditional numbers.
To do this, once I have established a correct exposure for my shooting style, I’ll take a white-card or white-t-shirt, anything white, and have the model hold it in front of her so I can fill the camera veiwfinder frame with solid white. From there I’ll take a picture using my camera's custom white-balance procedures--see your owner's manual if you need it. (Note: If I change the power of the pack, change the subject to flash distance, or change to a different shade of gel, I’ll redo the custom white-balance procedure.)
The white balance feature on the camera is originally created so your camera can ensure a known white will remain white under a specific light source, but I like to use it for many things including coloring the sky with gelled flash. I was more limited in film with this technique, but with custom white-balance today, I can do it with any color.
All photos below shot with Canon 5D with either the 85mm F/1.2 or the 70-200mm IS F/2.8 lenses, lighting by Hensel. No Photoshop was used to change the color of the background, what you see is what I saw (sans cleaning up the image like blemishes on a model's skin) in the camera.
Enjoy, rg sends!
Creative White Balance Techniques
