through a plastic gel or colored filter. One of my
favorite effects is placing a green gel in front of the
flash so that the sky becomes magenta. All this is
done in the camera, not in postproduction.
Some photographers will claim that when shoot-
ing in the RAW mode you can white balance during
the RAW conversion and avoid having to do a cus-
tom white balance during the shoot. I don’t rec-
ommend this, as you’ll get a more accurate and
correct skin tone with the correct white balance set-
ting during the shoot, especially when working with
strange colors and not the standard red, green,
blue, and their exact opposites, cyan, magenta, and
yellow. I might add, if you don’t do the custom
white balance when using colored gels on your
flash, your subject will look extremely off-color in
the LCD screen, and when your subject wants to
view the images during the shoot, they will think
you’ve made a serious lighting mistake. Always do
all you can in the camera during the shoot and
you’ll love yourself for it during postproduction—
it saves heartache, heartburn, and time by shaving
hours off postproduction.
While these techniques are great for outdoors,
don’t limit yourself: you can apply this technique
indoors too. As an example, if I photograph a
model in the studio on a white seamless or a white
cyclorama (cyc) wall with the main light covered with a^3 / 4 CTO, I’ll simply
set the white balance on my camera to 3200K or slightly higher, then aim two
regular flash units without CTO or gels into the background. Now my back-
ground should take on a more blue appearance as it is reflecting “daylight-bal-
anced” flash back into the camera (5500K) and my camera is set to a more
tungsten white balance (3200–4000K). You can do this also with other col-
ored gels using the custom white balance technique previously explained for
cyan or green gels to create red or magenta backgrounds.
When working at a residence or building with windows that allow daylight
to filter in, I’ll get the same blue-tinted effect on any light coming through any
windows or glass block provided I use a^3 / 4 CTO gel on my main light while
white balancing to tungsten. Hollywood photographers often use this tech-WHITE BALANCE 75FACING PAGE—The skies in the U.S. Virgin Islands can be dra-
matic. I like to add color to these sunsets, especially when dark
clouds are in the area. This image was shot approximately an
hour before the sunset, when the ambient light was still bright
but the clouded areas were dark—hence the faster camera
shutter sync-speed and the smaller aperture setting. The main
light was a 22-inch beauty dish with a^3 / 4 CTO (Rosco #3411)
gel. I can dial in my white balance to 3700K. The final image
was postprocessed in Adobe Photoshop using Nik Software’s
Dynamic Skin Softener and Bleach Bypass filters. (CAMERA:
Canon EOS 5D fitted with a Canon 70–200mm f/2.8L IS USM
lens. SETTINGS:78mm effective focal length,^1 / 200 second shutter
speed, f/16, white balance at 3700K, ISO 100)