Color and its Conversion

I was pretty harsh on my photos last time because I was very unhappy with the results. I fiddled with a picture or two because I liked the composition and negated the color in a simple editing program. Check out the results:



The weird color cast is caused by a mixing of halogen with a daylight balanced flash - one of the things that must be taken into consideration when shooting with color in mind. If shooting digital the fix is easy - take a test shot with daylight balance, adjust your white balance and gel the flash to match the ambient light. On film you need to use a filter (which will affect the exposure by some stops), then gel the flash to match the ambient light. On this picture the overall cast is greenish, so I would use a magenta tinged filter on the lens (to balance the green) and gel the flash with green. The gel will also take some power away from the flash so that must be taken into consideration as well when calculating exposure.

However if you want to make a color conversion, you can easily use a program do something like this:



I personally like black and white more than color anyway.

So I guess my lesson is that if a picture does not work for you in one way look at it again and think of other possible options. But please, not too many obvious changes: such would be garish.

flickr photos