Throughout the day, the colour of light changes. Look up at a clear sky, and you will notice that is often red or orange at sunrise or sunset and blue at midday or twilight. This shift in colour is described as the range of colour temperature. It is measured in degrees Kelvin (K).

The shift in colour temperature of daylight is caused because white light is made up of combination of other colours of light. As white sunlight passes through the atmosphere it is scattered. At sunrise or sunset, the sun is low on the horizon and the light must pass through more atmosphere, which scatters the shorter blue wavelengths and makes the light redder.

Most digital cameras will set the white balance automatically, but for precise control – or for creative reasons – you may want to override the camera’s automate white balance setting. There are several ways to do this:

• Most cameras have a range of white balance settings you can choose from (e.g. sunrise, snow, overcast, tungsten light).


• More modern cameras may allow you to indicate a point in the scene that should be white or grey, and adjust the whole scene accordingly. Good photography shops can sell you a target card that you can place in your scene for just this purpose.


Grey target card


• Thirdly, you can adjust the white balance in your computer after you have uploaded your photographs to it. If you are shooting digitally in RAW format, Adobe Photoshop’s RAW import filter allows very precise and easy control of white balance.

If you do manually adjust the white balance, make sure that you do not over compensate - you run the risk of your photograph looking unnatural. The human eye expects photographs taken at sunrise to have a red tone, or twilight shots to look a little blue. The secret to good white balancing is to reign in blue or red tones just enough, but to keep the shot looking natural.

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