Studio Anywhere: A Photographer’s Guide to Shooting in Unconventional Locations

18. Transform the Weather

As you saw with the cologne bottle in the previous chapter, an entire mood can be created or shifted, just by adding the element of lighting to a scene. For example, a flash allows you to pull out details in the highlights of the sky, details that wouldn’t normally be visible when you’re exposing for midtones or shadows in a scene. What you may not have known, however, is that by placing a colored gel on your flash and shifting your camera’s white balance to match it, you can transform the colors of the entire scene. Shooting on a dreary day? Put a blue gel on your flash and adjust your White Balance setting to Cloudy. Now anything lit with the flash will appear neutral, while the rest of the scene is warm. Or go the ...