Nature Photography 104: Part 9: the temperature of your colour?

To make a very long story short, I keep finding myself annoyed with nature photography. I was very worked up a few days ago, when I became quite confident that the winner of a fairly large photo contest must have edited/doctored the photo... I then look at said persons website, and found some very blatant editing along with large amounts of shameless self-promotion as a truly expert photographer. 

This really wasn't anything new, but I learned something from it: People can do whatever the heck they want, and I shouldn't care about it. If it bothers me, I can just focus on how I conduct myself and my photography! And with that said, I had the idea to reveal some of the work done on my own photos on my personal website. 

Are you ready for a look at everything you may or may not already know about nature photography? I'll post the website version first, followed by the totally un-edited original.

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Part 9: What’s the temperature of your colour?

Did you know that colour has a temperature? Did you know that our eyes adjust to the temperature differences easily and we rarely notice? Did you know you can really mess around with your nature pics by simply turning up (or down) the heat?

Time to look at my Canada Goose page for some examples:

Heebie jeebies. Here’s a classic example. As you increase the colour temperature of the pics, you increase the yellow/orange/red tones and you can suddenly make a simple sunset look CRAZY.

Here’s one of the worst examples on my website, where I just wanted the colour and turned up the temp. The original shown is actually a bit duller than real life, so I really didn’t take it THAT far, but it is pretty much possible to make any photo you take a “sunset” photo if you turn up the temps enough. That's exactly what the "sunset" function on your average "point and shoot" camera does automatically. 

At the same time, have you ever wondered why it is so VERY difficult to photograph birds with a pinkish hue (eg,/ Ross’s Gull pink?) because you colour temperature is too LOW and it’s masking the pink!

Here’s a look at the reverse:

Turning the temperature down gives a blue cast, and can really make those winter wonderland pics “pop”.  I’ll dig up some more examples in the future where I either turned the heat up, or down, and gave that picture a “little bit extra” that you may have never known or expected.