Simple Tips For Better Pics 6: Balancing Act

"Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."

Psalm 51:7

In photography there are so many things to keep in mind that it can be easy to overlook certain things, particularly things that involve using the camera's automatic settings like exposure and focus and such. But there is something else that can be very important to consider, and it's something even the best auto settings on the newest cameras struggle with, and that would be your white balance.

The white balance is an important calibration as it will impact the overall tone of your image, as any light source can have an impact on the color temperature of your pictures if not corrected for. You may have a shady area, and find your picture has a bluish tint to it. Or perhaps you are indoors and suddenly you find your images taken are yellow!

Below is a Citrus Swallowtail, the one on the left has a greenish-yellow tint, the one on the right is properly white balanced.

The easiest way to adjust for these variations is to purchase a relatively cheap grey calibration card, or white balance card (they can be found online for ten bucks) and you hold one of these cards in one of the images during your shoot in the lighting environment you are in, having a good shot of it, and then you can do one of two things.

If your camera has white balance settings, you can access the image of the card you shot and use that as the basis for the correction (on my Pentax for example, it will have you select the area on the grey card in that picture and use that to make the calibration) as you then proceed to take your pictures in those same lighting conditions (i.e. sunlight, shade, etc.) and if it doesn't change you should find your images looking spot on when it comes to color tone.

In the below example, we have a Scarlet Macaw where the image on the right is too blue; the one on the left is white balanced.

The other way I do it is using Adobe Photoshop, and with their eyedropper tool you select any area on the same grey card in that same image previously mentioned and then multi-select all the images in that shoot where it had that same lighting, and it will do the same as the example above.

After a while it will become really routine, but the benefits from taking those extra few moments of preparation are really worth it. Again, your camera's auto white balance may be sufficient here and there, but much like auto exposure, it will have its hiccups - best to be prepared.

The Scripture verse from Psalm 51 above resonates very much with me as a photographer, but even more so as a believer in Jesus Christ; His words speak of the beauty and purity He Seeks for all of us, using the example of making us: "whiter than snow."

With White Balance what we are basically doing is instructing the camera to eliminate any outside color interference - to keep the image pure in a sense, in as much as the colors are true and the way they are meant to be... In order to do this it makes sure that whites are whites, and that there is no variation in them. White as snow, if you will.

May we seek to allow the Lord to Keep our spiritual lives calibrated the way God wants it to be, as only He can. Pure and true. And we can only attain that - through the Grace of Jesus Christ and faith and obedience in Him and to Him...

That's it for this one, by God's Grace I will have another one next week to share. You all take care and stay safe in The Lord's Care...

Until next time...

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Simple Tips For Better Pics 6: Balancing Act

"Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."

Psalm 51:7

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