So this evening I grabbed this quick shot with my trusty Canon G11.<\/p>\n
You might say it doesn\u2019t look real.\u00a0 How could the outside be so blue?\u00a0 But in fact, this is one of those cases where the camera doesn\u2019t lie.\u00a0 Given that the sun is way below the horizon and the source of illumination outside is the sky, then the light outside is in fact blue.\u00a0 Inside we have incandescent lights, the color of which is definitely yellow.\u00a0 The contrast of standing on the inside with warm light and looking out into cool light is both apparent and striking.<\/p>\n Suffice it to say that color temperature is a quantitative measure of the blueness or redness of the ambient light.\u00a0 Color temperature is measured in degrees Kelvin and the scale goes opposite of what you would expect.\u00a0 Low temperatures are red and high temperatures are blue (even though we think of reds as warm and blues as cool).\u00a0 So the color temperature inside the room may be about 4500 degrees and outside it may be 9000 degrees or more.\u00a0 We\u2019ll get into this in more detail some other time.<\/p>\n As photographers we can use this understanding of color temperature to our advantage.\u00a0 As digital photographers we always have the option of setting our white balance to compensate for the color temperature \u2013 daylight, cloudy, shade, tungsten, etc.<\/p>\n But we can also use this creatively.\u00a0 We routinely use the warm light of the \u2018golden hour,\u2019 the hour after sunrise and before sunset, to give our images a warm glow.\u00a0 But we can also use the cool light of dusk.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t usually see the colors because our minds are stronger than our eyes and tell us what the color really should be.\u00a0 But we can train ourselves to pay attention to what our eyes are telling us and actually see the color.<\/p>\n Give it a try.\u00a0 With a little practice you\u2019ll be able to see the blue in the shadows.\u00a0 And you just might decide you like it and leave it in your images instead of correcting it out\u00a0 because it doesn\u2019t look real.<\/p>\n To see more of my photographs click here.<\/a><\/p>\n Join me on an upcoming workshop.<\/a><\/p>\n Become a fan on Facebook and follow along.<\/a><\/p>\n (1205)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I spend a lot of time looking out our kitchen window at dawn, watching the way the light changes (usually sipping a cup of Dragonwell green tea).\u00a0 It\u2019s fascinating to see how one morning changes from the next.\u00a0 And the best time of the year to see clear, colorful sunrises (and sunsets) is now \u2013 … Continue reading “Color Temperature”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[13,10,268,93],"class_list":["post-949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-how-to-articles","tag-photography","tag-ralph-nordstrom","tag-tips","tag-workshop"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Nl7-fj","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=949"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3951,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions\/3951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"IMG_1030\"](\"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/IMG_1030_thumb.jpg\" 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<\/a> This is looking out our back window after the sun has gone down (yes, I photograph twilight too).<\/p>\n