Exploring Photography: White Balance and Color Temperature

- I'll be honest. I find working with color to be one of the most difficult aspects of photography. I don't know if it's just that I see the world more black and white, and I don't know what that says about my personality. But color very often is hard for me because it's this whole extra layer of information in the image that I sometimes don't know what to do with. But I do know that I at least want to start with it being accurate, and the key to accurate color is good white balance. White balance is something you've probably seen on your camera, maybe you already even know something about it.

It's the way that you can ensure that color looks good under any type of light. But it can sometimes require a little bit of an extra step in your shooting. In this course we're going to take a look at precisely what that extra step should be. We're going to look at the automatic white balance features on your camera, when they might go wrong, and what you can do to compensate for times when auto white balance isn't working for you. We're going to take a look at some white balance aids, and some extra tricky things you can do with white balance. A lot of people are scared of white balance, particularly if they're coming from a film background, but it's really not that complicated.

It's just something you need to think about anytime you change lighting situations. But once you're got it in your head it's a very easy thing to work with, as you'll see throughout this course.