Trick photography...

Eight seconds: That is all you get, photographers! That is the estimated time a casual magazine reader will spend on a photograph whilst idly flipping through the pages, before turning to the next and ignoring (and forgetting) your photograph for evermore. Not long, so the photographer needs to make the image as appealing as possible to keep the viewers attention. Other than the content of the photo itself, one such trick is to warm-up the overall tone, by either shooting with the right filters in front of the lens at the time, or adding warmth during post processing - in Photoshop (or other editing software). A photograph with warm tones will make the viewer feel more comfortable - we all like to be warm; cold tones will have the opposite effect. Colour psychology in action, and the viewer will not even be aware of it.

I prefer the latter technique these days and do it all on the computer, as it allows total control of the image, which can be adjusted at a later date should the need arise. This could also be done in the days of film, by re-photographing a print or transparency and adding the appropriate filter for the desired effect, but it was rather time consuming and the results were not immediately apparent.

There are occasions when I forgo the warming-up process and deliberately cool a scene, as I have done here, by adding a subtle blue tint. CC, or Colour Correction filters were originally intended to do just that: correct the colour of light. A blue filter might be employed for taming down the sun's late afternoon redness in a portrait, for example, for a more natural appearance, but they became useful for pictorial applications in their own right. Of course, a filter used well is never obvious to the viewer.


24-70mm f/2.8G AF-S Nikkor. 1/1600 second at f/5.6. + 0.33 EV compensation. ISO 400


© 2012