The Flash Book

Using White Balance as a Second Color

This one-flash portrait color trick has been around for a while, but it’s still popular because it gives you the look of two flashes when using just one. Here’s what you do: first, put a pretty heavy CTO gel over your flash, so the light from it is pretty orange (see page 84 for more on CTO gels), and then set the white balance in your camera to a very blue setting (like Tungsten, or use the K [Kelvin scale] manual white balance setting and dial it over to a very cool setting, like 2500K, which will be very blue). Now, when you take the shot, your subject will appear warm (slightly to moderately orange) against ...