Golden hour on the beach

[dje]

Janis my apologies if I've made it look overly complicated. It's a little difficult to explain. Dan's extra comments are helpful I think.

To put it in a nutshell - when you adjust the Col Temp slider in a WB adjustment, you are not changing the Col Temp of the illuminant, you are changing the WB correction factor corresponding to an assumed Col Temp of the illuminant. If you bring the slider down below the optimum WB setting you will be under-correcting for the warmth of the actual illuminant and it will look blueish. And vice versa.

Nice image by the way!

Dave

[purplehaze]

Thanks, Dan and Dave. Your explanations correspond to what was my understanding.

I went back to the image a third time, and gave it what I think is a more accurate white balance for the time of day that it was.

I may have oversaturated, but that is another issue.

#3

[dje]

Looks good to me Janis

Dave

[purplehaze]

Thanks, Dave. I think I like it a little less saturated. In any case, when I shoot this weekend, I will try to pay more attention to the actual colour temperatures of my light sources. Once again, I have learned something from this marvelous community.

[Jim A]

I love it, Janis.

Disclosure: I have not read most of the comments above - they are probably great and well thought out, but as a Plebeian I fell asleep.

Just want to make one observation. The sky is mostly interesting, however, the part above the marvellous semi-circle, is not. My suggestion is to crop the top part out.

[purplehaze]

Thanks, Jim. I will be going back to this, so I will give it a try.

[Manfred M]

In any case, when I shoot this weekend, I will try to pay more attention to the actual colour temperatures of my light sources.

Janis - I would suggest you also pay close attention to a couple of other things; the colours of the sky at different positions as well as how dark and light it is. Don't forget that the camera meter will tend to overexpose as it gets darker.

[billtils]

I went back to the image a third time, and gave it what I think is a more accurate white balance for the time of day that it was.

Janis, irrespective of the various erudite discussions that led to you going back for third go, I like this one a lot.

[purplehaze]

Will do, Manfred.

Thanks, Bill. I have yet another version in which I have drawn a little more attention to the people by brightening them a touch using Nik’s Viveza. I would also like to see a version with noise reduction applied.

[johnlarsen]

Golden Hour is closer to 3500K and can drop even lower (2500 K) just before the sun sets. 7000K - 8000K (and higher) is north facing sky at noon. Those colour temperatures are not really all that important unless you are shooting portraits under those lighting conditions and are trying to get the skin colour to look right.

Very much agree with you. And want to remind some, that despite the phrase contains thd word 'hour', the phrase is not about time of the day, but more about the tones in the images.