cold and rainy :: June 17

Allison & Duncan, Halton Museum, Milton

We’ve had a really cold and wet wedding season so far! In May you didn’t really even need a forecast…

So for this week’s picture I thought I’d use something that illustrates both the weather *and* a photographic  problem turned into a solution: mixed light. Photographers usually–and with good reason–hate mixed light.

Mixed light is light of different colour temperatures that come from different light sources. Different temperature light falling on a subject means–whether you’re shooting film or digital–the subject will have different colour casts. To get natural looking colour, photographers tend to prefer consistent light. That way, you can balance the colour well and have convincing colour tone across the image.  This is one reason I gel my flashes at a reception; I want the colour of my flash to look more like the reception lights than daylight (which is, generally speaking, a flash head’s colour balance).

So at Allison and Duncan’s wedding in May, it was cold. And wet… all day. This quick shot of them by a light fixture on the wall came late afternoon, and was one of our quick trips outside!

Here  you see the light on them being contributed by the ambient–and very dull–daylight, and the light behind them coming from the light fixture on the wall. Wonderfully, the black umbrella that they needed for the rain shielded their faces so there’s good and consistent skin tones, while the “out of colour balance” tungsten light lends a lot of warmth to what otherwise would simply be cold and dull. That warmth “naturally” surrounds them in this shot, and so I like the fact that the light lends emotional strength to the moment’s emotional value.

And given the weather we’ve been having lately, there’s nothing wrong with a little more warmth 🙂