Exercise: Judging Colour Temperature

For the first part of this exercise, i took 3 photographs of a face, one in full sunlight, one in shade and one at low sun  with the white balance set to daylight.

Full sunlight

Shade

Low sun

In the photograph in full sunlight, the hair and the skin both have an orangey glow, perhaps reflected from the sun.

The photograph in the shade is more white, both the skin and the hair are a lot whiter. Perhaps more than naturally so. The more you look at that photograph the more unnaturally white/ pale it looks.

The photograph at low sun has a slight orange tint to the entire frame, Again probably reflected from the setting sun. Not really noticeable at this size, but when blown up, the skin has a slight pinkish tone and looks more natural than the previous two images.

For the second part of this task, i had to take the same three pictures i did previously, but take another photograph in each scenario with the white balance set to auto and again with it set to shade.

I decided to use the same pictures previously used, and the same person so i could truly see the different effects the colour had on a person. The same person

Top row: Full Daylight - Auto, Daylight, Shade
Middle row: In Shade - Auto, Daylight, Shade
Bottom row: Low sun- Auto, Daylight, Shade

With the white balance set to shade, Each photograph looks orange and quite unnatural. Apart from the photograph in low sun, as the orange looks more subtle, and more natural for that time of day, as one would presume it has been cast from the setting sun. For use in shade, i would not use this setting based on what i have taken here, as it does not look very natural at all.

The daylight pictures probably look the most natural, they have a slight yellow tone to the skin compared to the auto setting. As you would expect in daylight under the sun. This rule however does not seem to apply to the low sun photograph, an exception to each rule it seems. The photograph in low sun with the daylight setting seems the darkest out of each of the setting in that condition, even though the exposures are exactly the same. Blacks seem to be more black, and whites whiter. The most natural out of the three, with no tints from the sun or settings. Apart from where the light hits the hair it would seem.

The automatic seem to have the whitest light out of all of them apart from in low lighting again, where it seems quite a dull yellow as if over compensating and trying to create a daylight effect.