John Caldwell Offline Upload & Sell: On
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Thanks again to all.
The repetitive comments about white balance do surprise me. It's not that the comments are wrong in any way, but I wouldn't expect so many photographers to want to correct colors in a cold winter, late day, scene. When conditions are very cold and late in the day, the light is most certainly not neutral as most of us experience that light. The light has a decidedly cool, non-neutral, mood. Depending on circumstances, it may take on a cyan cast as it did here. There is no question that we can correct that light in post, shooting color charts and gray cards, but in doing so, you waive the color information in the light that gives cues regarding the scene. You loose the mood of the light, as it see it, by correcting the WB to neutral. We could make it very difficult for you to guess the season (were it not for the snow) and the time of day, by correcting the WB and profile to Correct.
In these shots, the snow is certainly not neutral as it has been rendered. The dogs' coats are much less warm orange than they appear at noon on a bright day. Their faces are black as coal, not with a deep cyan gray as they appear here. No question about any of those points. But in my mind, and others will of course see it differently, I would walk away with a very different qualitative feel about this scene if those color cues were erase. As I see it, rendering those tones accurately, instead of the way I experienced the tones at the time of shooting, would not place you at the scene in the way I hope to do.
Certainly I welcome others' views on this, or any other points, related to the topic at hand. I had believed, possibly in error, that handling white balance to render colors as they were experienced, instead of how those colors would have appeared at 12 noon on a sunny day, was pretty pedestrian in our world. But I am interested in how others see this matter.
Many thanks,
John Caldwell
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