Strange trick to see light

It’s #TravelTuesday and I, Dave Williams, am here again! This week I write from northern Norway where the northern lights are dancing over me as I type and I hear the sound of reindeer outside among the trees. I’ll show my view on my YouTube channel on Sunday if you want to see.

This week I want to share a rather peculiar trick to help you to see light when shooting, if it’s something you’re trying to learn. I’ve written before about how to read a Histogram, which apparently I wrote while on an airplane flying to Orlando one day, and it’s a key skill we should have as photographers. Interpreting a chart on a screen versus seeing light for real are two different things, though. So here’s the strange trick: –

First off, before you do anything, known that to do this effectively you must be shooting raw! That way you can properly adjust in post. You’ll see why in a second…

Here’s a hairy highland cow. You’ll (hopefully) immediately know that the colour is totally wrong. Well, that’s the trick! When we shoot outside we’ll usually have a warm White Balance. Keep that info in your mind while I also say this: When we look at our preview screen we often look at composition and colour first and while we’re learning to see light, we may not notice it.

If we shoot in a peculiar White Balance, such as Tungsten or Fluorescent when outside or Sunny when inside, we’ll knock the colour out and start to see the difference in tones rather than the tones themselves. We’ll see the light and shadow far easier because we’ve eliminated something in the shot – the correct colour. We can fix the White Balance in post because we shot raw, just like this: –

This is literally the strangest photo tip I’ve ever written, but please trust me, it works! It will help you to see light on the preview screen when shooting if you’re still learning to do so.

I’m going to get back to shooting the aurora now.

From Norway, much love
Dave

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