Chasing the Light: Improving Your Photography with Available Light

Understanding White Balance

In order to understand light, you need to understand that light consists of color. The light that illuminates our world is made up of three primary colors: red, green, and blue. The combination of these colors impacts how the color in the scene you’re photographing is rendered by the camera. The quality of light can range from the cool blue of early morning to the warm, orange glow of sunset.

The color temperature of any light source is based on the experiments of British physicist William Kelvin, who discovered that a piece of carbon produced varying colors at different temperatures. On a scale ranging from 0 to 10,000 Kelvin, light at lower temperatures of 1,850K to 3,380K (candlelight, tungsten) produces a warm, ...