Golden hour on the beach

[purplehaze]

This was shot handheld with the D750 and the Tamron 24-70 mm. I don't think I have used this combination much for landscape as I tend to reach for my Sigma 18-35, but as that lens is a crop lens, and I was going to be shooting handheld, I decided to give it a try.


f/11 @ 1/160, ISO 3600, 24 mm

It seems to have lost something in the conversion to jpg.

[billtils]

There's a lot of potential in this Janis - you could do worse than use it as a test-bed for your assorted software!

[Manfred M]

If you hadn't mentioned that it was Golden Hour in the title, I would never have guessed that it was that time of day.

The colour temperature is "wrong" for golden hour (not warm enough) and the overall look is too bright (i.e. no where near sunset). Playing with just those two parameters might be worth considering...

[Tronhard]

Sorry Manfred, for me you killed it. To me it looks way too dark and the clouds way too dramatic and foreboding - it doesn't look natural to me at all.

I have seen the so-called golden hour when it has been less than golden so Janice's original may not be too far off reality, especially in the early part of the cycle.

[Manfred M]

Sorry Manfred, for me you killed it. To me it looks way too dark and the clouds way too dramatic and foreboding - it doesn't look natural to me at all.

Good. Over the top is what I was trying for.

[Tronhard]

Ha!! LOL!!!
Good one Manfred!

[purplehaze]

Fact is, Manfred, you are nearly always in my head, admonishing me to go brighter, among other things. I may have to banish you to a corner, and just let you out now and again.

Second try, sticking closer to the original exposure, warmed from 7000 to 8000 degrees K, with various selective adjustments to the sky, rocks and sand:

[Manfred M]

warmed from 7000 to 8000 degrees K

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.

[Shadowman]

Nice effort, my sunrise/sunset images never look as dramatic SOOC unless I underexpose, interesting there are no shadows casting from the figures.

[purplehaze]

Nice effort, my sunrise/sunset images never look as dramatic SOOC unless I underexpose, interesting there are no shadows casting from the figures.

Thanks John. The sun actually went behind a cloud before it slid beneath the horizon, which no doubt explains something about the white balance.

Edit: In fact, I just reviewed the whole series of images, and it looks like the sun had already set when I shot this image, so we are no longer in the golden hour after all. My goof; sorry, but not my last, I am sure.

[xpatUSA]

Second try, sticking closer to the original exposure, warmed from 7000 to 8000 degrees K

Janis, you might want to reconsider your terminology so as not to confuse some folks here. It's unfortunate that "warm" in photographic visual terms actually refers to a lower color temperature. So, using photographic visual terminology, going from 7,000K to 8,000K actually made your image "colder"! You see, the color red is thought of and is described as "warm" but it's color temperature is around 2,500K, as opposed to the color blue which is thought of and is described as "cold" but it's color temperature is around 7,500K.

[Shadowman]

Thanks John. The sun actually went behind a cloud before it slid beneath the horizon, which no doubt explains something about the white balance.

Edit: In fact, I just reviewed the whole series of images, and it looks like the sun had already set when I shot this image, so we are no longer in the golden hour after all. My goof; sorry, but not my last, I am sure.

Janis,

That does explain the expected background elements we expect in a golden hour image.

[Manfred M]

Thanks John. The sun actually went behind a cloud before it slid beneath the horizon, which no doubt explains something about the white balance.

Edit: In fact, I just reviewed the whole series of images, and it looks like the sun had already set when I shot this image, so we are no longer in the golden hour after all. My goof; sorry, but not my last, I am sure.

That suggests that you are into Blue Hour. That is definitely one of my favourite times of day for photography (and most photographers tend to pack up once the sun drops below the horizon).

That definitely explains the 7000K - 8000K colour temperature value. The question is whether you want to neutralize that effect (which is what you will get by dialing in a very high colour temperature) or want to display everything in cool tones, which is the traditional approach with blue hour shots.

One well known landscape photographer I know always shoots at 5000K and that gives him the colours he wants as the whole scene is bathed in the blue light reflecting from the sky when the sun is below the horizon. It also gives him the warm tones from the sun as it is close to the horizon.

This would be a more typical approach to a blue hour shot (based on a 5500K colour temperature). The shot has some similarities to what the clouds are doing in your shot on the left hand side of this image.

[Manfred M]

Janis, you might want to reconsider your terminology so as not to confuse some folks here. It's unfortunate that "warm" in photographic visual terms actually refers to a lower color temperature. So, using photographic visual terminology, going from 7,000K to 8,000K actually made your image "colder"! You see, the color red is thought of and is described as "warm" but it's color temperature is around 2,500K, as opposed to the color blue which is thought of and is described as "cold" but it's color temperature is around 7,500K.

Ted - that's the engineer talking, not the artist.

Artists view the cool tones as the blues and violets whereas the warm tones are the reds, yellows and oranges.

[purplehaze]

Janis, you might want to reconsider your terminology so as not to confuse some folks

The confusion is at least partly mine, Ted. In processing terms, with my software at least, dragging the slider from left to right, i.e., from low K to high K, adds yellow, so to my mind, I am “warming” when I do so. Given that this is all a balancing exercise, is it not just a question of perspective? (Like “zooming in” and “zooming out”, which appears to mean different things to different people.) If I am totally off my rocker, here, just tell me so, and I will throw in the towel.

[Manfred M]

The confusion is at least partly mine, Ted. In processing terms, with my software at least, dragging the slider from left to right, i.e., from low K to high K, adds yellow, so to my mind, I am “warming” when I do so. Given that this is all a balancing exercise, is it not just a question of perspective? (Like “zooming in” and “zooming out”, which appears to mean different things to different people.) If I am totally off my rocker, here, just tell me so, and I will throw in the towel.

When I took a colour correction course the instructor had quite a discussion about colour.

The topic is confusing because every time we talk about colour in photography we have to look at it from three different views:

1. Physics - that is the view that Ted has mentioned and when we look at colour from a pure physics standpoint we look at something called "black body radiation". This is a theoretical construct, but if you have ever watched a blacksmith at work you can see a good approximation when a steel bar is heated in a forge. It starts out red, gets more yellow and eventually looks white. The low temperatures correspond to the reds and yellows and as the steel gets closer to the melting point it gets "white hot".

2. Physiology - this is how our body works and in the case of photography it is a combination of how our eyes and brain assemble what we see. Our camera sensors work somewhat like our eyes as there are receptors for red, green and blue wavelengths of light. Our brains interprets these as the colours we see. Shine white light on a surface that reflects red and absorbs all other colours, we interpret that as a red object.

3. Psychology - something that is yellow, red or orange we feel is a "warm tone". Give us something that is blue or violet, that gives us a cool or cold feeling. That is something that we are taught and / or is programmed into our heads, at least in Western cultures. I'm not sure if all cultures look at this the same way. As an example, black is something we tend to wear to funerals but in India, they wear white.

Yes it is confusing....

[Wavelength]

Your eit gives more of the golden hour feeling; i like the surreal drama of Manfred's edit too

[dje]

Color Temperature can certainly be confusing. As the temperature of a black body radiator increases, it's color changes from orange/yellow through white through to cyan/blue. See the chromaticity diagram below.



On the other hand, on the White Balance adjustment screen, the lower temperature end of the temperature scale is usually shown as blue and the upper end yellow.



This apparent discrepency is probably best explained by an example.

Remember that the WB adjustment is correcting the raw R,G and B values from the camera so that they are all the same for a uniform grey target. Lets say for example that those values (normalised to green) are

R=0.5
G=1
B=0.75
(These happen to be the values for my D610 for a CCT of about 5000.)

To make the WB in the image look correct, the software multiplies these values by their inverses. So the WB mutipliers are

r=2
G=1
B=1.33

When we move the temperature slider to the left, we assume for our WB adjustment that the illuminant temperature for the image was actually lower than 5000 (ie hotter or more yellow looking). This means that we assume that the R values are higher and the B values are lower than they actually are (for a grey target). So the R WB multiplier is lower and the B WB multiplier is higher (inverses of the actual raw values). eg for an assumed Col Temp of 4000, the WB multipliers become about 1.5 and 1.7 for R and B respectively. This means that the image appears bluer.

So the colors on the temp slider reflect what happens to the color of the image which is inverse to the assumed change in Color temperature of the illuminant.

No need to throw in the towel Janis

Dave

[purplehaze]

Thanks for the elucidation, Dave and Manfred. I can't say I grasp everything in your post, Dave, but I get the gist and am relieved to know it basically confirms what I understood. If I have caused any confusion, perhaps I can make up for it with this video, which I found helpful.

[DanK]

Janis,

I think the key concept is in Dave's post, but it might be clearer to you if presented without the math. Dave, correct me if this explanation is wrong.

Suppose that you set your camera at 5200K or 5400K, fairly common settings for daylight, but then took photos on an overcast day. The color temperature on an overcast day is more like 6000 or even higher, meaning that it is more blue than it would be in bright sunlight. If you had set the camera to 6000, it would have correctly set the white balance so that a neutral gray or white would not have a blue-ish tone. However, because you set the camera to 5200, it applies the wrong correction--not moving far enough away from blue and toward yellow--and and the image therefore looks too blue. This will be baked into the image if you shoot JPEG. If not, it will be in EXOF anyway, and the raw processing software will read it (the Lightroom "as shot" value).

Now, the key to understanding WB adjustments in software like Lightroom is Dave's reference to inverses. The scale is flipped. Note that when you move the slider to the right, the numbers increase, but the color becomes more yellow rather than more blue.

What you are doing with these inverses can be thought of as telling the software what the color temperature setting in EXIF should have been. You want this overly blue example to be more yellow, so you move the slider to the right. That will give you a higher value, even though the image becomes more yellow. That is because you are telling the software to think that the light at the time of capture was at a higher value, say, 6000. Rather than applying the correction in EXIF, which says that the color temperature was 5200, you are telling the software that the light was more blue than that, so it has to compensate by making the image more yellow.

So, I have found that the easiest way to think of this is to ask what color temperature should have been indicated to start the processing.