Wedding Photography Tips for Beginners - Properly White Balancing Your Photos Part 2

I've written these two articles to give you some basic and intermediate tips to correctly color balance your photos during a wedding. As I stated in the other article, a wedding has many light sources and these light sources compete to be the main light in your photos. The problem is, if these light sources have very different color temperatures, your images will have an incorrect white balance. Imagine taking a picture where the room is lit by fluorescent overhead lighting, but in the corner of the room there is a set of candles in front of a white wall. These two very different light sources will give you an incorrect white balance. To keep this from happening, you will need to be aware of light sources during a wedding. I discussed this in the first article, as well as how to use your flash without a colored gel in daylight, or where the main light source is daylight. In this article I will give you tips on how to properly gel your flash in different lighting circumstances.

Indoors you will normally be faced with one of three main light sources. These are: daylight, fluorescent, and tungsten. When you enter a room you will need to be able to identify the main source of light, then match it. I talked about daylight in the previous article. If your light source is fluorescent, they you will need to put a fluorescent gel on your flash and set the white balance on your camera to fluorescent lighting. Nowadays there are many different types of fluorescent lighting with different color temperatures. This means you will need to carry a few different fluorescent gels with you. Likewise, you will need a few different CTO gels to match different types of tungsten lighting. These tungsten gels are: full CTO, 1/2 CTO, and 1/4 CTO. As before, put a CTO gel on your flash and set the white balance on your camera to tungsten. With either a fluorescent gel or CTO gel, try different ones out and see what matches best the main light in the room.

If you enter a room and see competing light sources you will need to remedy the situation. In the opening example with the room lit by candles and fluorescent lighting you have two choices: blow out the candles or turn off the overhead lighting. If the candles are not going to be in frame, or they are far enough from where you are shooting such that they are not giving off competing light then you can shoot no problem. Following this principle, if I enter a room and there is tungsten light, I am not going to shoot with my bare flash (which is made to match daylight). I need to identify that the main source is tungsten, and put on a gel to match it.

Lastly, sunrise and sunset is not normal daylight! This means when shooting the wedding couple with the sunset in the background for example, you will need to use a CTO gel on your flash. Which one? As stated above, try different ones, and see which one best suits the light the sun is giving off at this particular time and place. Hope these tips help. Good Luck!