How the flash changes colours....

June 3, 2008

This is more a note to myself, but I think it will let it stand as a public post…

I was idly playing with the eucalyptus leaves on the lawn in Kodai when I made this pattern, and decided, as the light was fading, to try one photograph with flash, and one without. And I was surprised by how different the colours looked….

Here’s the photo with natural light:

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And with the flash:

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The colours, the warm/cool balance…everything is different!

So, in digital photography, I find that the colours in the final photograph depend very much on the camera and what one has set the white balance for; and of course, if one is using any post-processing software, that would give one further ability to manipulate the colours and their saturation. What used to be the prerogative of the laboratory developing one’s pictures (unless one happened to be the darkroom I-develop-my-pictures type), is now largely in one’s own hands, in fact, to a large extent as one makes the image.

I want to acknowledge here, the help which I have received from several photographers, by advice and by example..it started with KM the S (KM the Spouse)and then several more friends….some of them on LJ are (in alphabetical order)…. ,,,,,,...I am sure I have missed out some names, but several people have been so patient and helpful in getting some of the elements of photography into the concrete cauliflower my brain.

OK, non-photography types, you can wake up from your bored-to-death snooze now.