White Balance & Snow
It’s no doubt that winter is upon us, unless you’re one of the fortunate that reside in a warmer climate! I was beginning to wonder if it really was December. Living in Wyoming, I’m used to having snow storms as early as September and as late as May. But this year has been different, not much snow and very cold.
So today I had to do some last-minute shopping. I know, I had all year to do it and waited until now! Since it’s been so cold lately, I’ve been pretty much confined to the house so it’s nice to get out once in awhile. I grabbed my camera and out the door I went.
After my bit of shopping, I decided to drive down to the park to see if I could get some pictures. I knew there wouldn’t be many people, if any, down there and the trees against the snow make for a nice contrast.
Well, as luck would have it, it was just too darn cold to really get any good shots. So I thought I would take the opportunity to demonstrate the effect your camera’s white balance has on prestine white snow!
If you’ve ever shot in the snow, you know that it can be pretty difficult to get the right white balance. Usually, the snow turns out looking gray and nasty!
I have 4 shots taken right from my camera, no post-processing involved. I then have 3 that I processed the white balance in Lightroom. And the final image is one that I corrected using Lightroom and Photoshop.
Image #1 – WB = Cloudy
Image #2 – WB = AWB (Automatic White Balance)
Image #3 – WB = Daylight
Image #4 – WB = Shade
Holy cow! Four images with 4 different WB settings, giving 4 completely ugly results! (I’m not talking about the subject matter, composition, etc. It was way too cold to worry about that at the time!)
Here are the 3 that I edited in Lightroom:
Image #1 – WB = Flash
Image #2 – WB = Fluorescent
Image #3 – WB = Tungsten (Look out!)
Are you serious? Unless you’re going for some retro-ugly, never do that!
Ok, so the last one is the one I manually adjusted the WB in Lightroom, along with the exposure, clarity, and tonal curves, and final adjustments made in Photoshop. Not much I can do with such a sorry excuse for a picture, but hopefully you get the idea!
If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments. Thank you!