In this tutorial from Adorama TV, Daniel Norton shows the magical trick of how changing the color temperature can turn day into night. In his studio in New York, Daniel shoots in a broad daylight, right in front of floor-to-ceiling, wide windows.
Here is how the image will look without any color manipulation, using only natural light form behind.
In this example the white balance is currently set to: “daylight”.
A basic, with blown out window lights, not so pretty lighting on the model’s face – this photo is your average daylight photo type.
To achieve the “nighttime” feel, we can use this trick – change the light color setting to a colder, blueish temperature. This technique has been widely used in cinematography for a long time.
On this photo we switched white balance towards to a colder color. The picture turned blue, yet is still too bright for the nighttime. Model’s skin also looks unhealthy blueish and needs to be corrected.
Let’s increase the shutter speed to 1/800 to make the picture really dark and enrich the blue color.
Now let’s turn our strobes on.
On this picture we added a key strobe to light up our model’s face from the front. The key light also translates as blueish due to our camera’s white balance setting. To remedy that, we need to produce a tungsten light from our flash, using CTO – color temperature orange.
Now the model is neutralized.
Adjusting our exposure…
Now adding a fill light from the back with preinstalled CTB – color temperature blue, to add more moonlight nighttime effect.
The final step is to use a third light with another CTO filer on and aim at windows and the wall, thus imitating an evening moody warm light apartment light.
Final adjustments are made to find a balance between 3 lights.
Watch the full episode with Daniel Norton and Adorama TV: