So to break away from posts about abandoned places (kind of) for a moment, I wanted to address other urban explorers who also photograph buildings as they explore. So while this post is more geared toward helping photographers learn, others still may enjoy the read. It’s always great learning something new, being able to put it into perspective when seeing some of the photos that I share below.

Okay, so I wouldn’t call it a “guide” as much as I would call it some tips and general info on 1) how to use white balance creatively, and 2) really just how white balance works, helping some get a better understanding of how it works. Knowing these things can help greatly in your use of white balance as a creative tool. Also, ice cream is definitely breakfast. I know, because I’m eating it right now at 9:00am. It’s blueberry pancake ice cream, so it counts.

I’m often asked about this photo and if I had edited the colors. Well, I shouldn’t really say “asked” but more or less told that I edited the colors. That being said, a few have actually asked me. So here’s how it goes. Behind me was a window, as you can see in the second photo here:

From this window, at the time that I was taking the other photo, light was coming in from street lights outside. Most lights you’ll find in various fixtures throughout cities and towns will all vary in their color temperature. This is expressed in kelvins, which is a unit of measure for absolute temperature. If you look on light bulb boxes at home, you’ll see numbers like 5,600k, 3,000k, 2,200k etc. with “daylight” sitting between 5,000 to 6,500. This is what you will use to base your purchase decision on for whatever look you may be going for in a room (bright like daylight, almost blueish white for some kind of bright calming effect, or warm for a sleepy relaxed calming effect, etc.)

The street lights behind me were probably sitting somewhere around the 3,000ish range, while the street lights in the window behind the stairs were most likely sitting closer to the 2,000 range or even lower. This is what makes them give their orange glow.

I’ll get to the top dome area in a minute.

When you balance color for a photograph, you are setting the white balance, telling the camera which type of light you are shooting so that (in the most general way of putting it) it matches the true colors of the scene as much as possible (or not, if you want a warmer or cooler tone. Oooh, artsy.) This is sometimes much more controlled in studio or other setups if outdoors/on location. I rarely ever use any lighting, and just work with what is around me. This often presents some interesting color shifts for areas.

I could talk a LOT about white balancing, but I won’t go super in-depth with that right now.

When I set the white balance for this image, I was mostly balancing for the warmer tones of the window behind the stairs, because I liked that warm glow. When you balance a camera for warmer tones like that, you will often find yourself balancing toward the cooler end (closer to 2-3k, because on a camera you have to think backwards) confusing? That’s fine. Maybe I will explain more of that later. Anyway, you balance that as to not get TOO warm of colors, since it is already so warm in the first place, and if you balance too far to the warmer end, the entire room can end up orange (which can be cool) but in this case, I wanted a good balance for the stairs, etc.

Once I had it to a spot I was comfortable with, the lights behind me, initially appearing a sort of yellow, were now appearing a warmer green due to the camera’s white balance setting.

Since the white balance was set toward the cooler end of the spectrum, this meant the natural daylight coming in would be far off balance, but in this case would give a great effect for color.

We all know that moment before the sun actually comes up, but is still tucked behind the horizon. The time where it’s lighting up the sky enough to give it some blue – the morning “blue hour.” I should note that this happens during the evening as well, sometimes called twilight, or just the evening blue hour.

Due to the camera being balanced toward the cooler end, this really helps this blue to stand out. There is no, or very little light spill at the top of the building from any street lights below, so pure morning blue hour light is coming through the windows at the top of the stairs. Remember, this is before the sun was coming up, so it’s a nice flat blue light.

For the photo of the stairs, I used an ISO of 6400, with a shutter speed of 15 seconds. The lens I used was a Rokinon 12mm 2.8 on a Sony a7s. In the editing process, I brought up some of the shadows, brought down highlights, and adjusted the contrast a bit. No color was added. No color was removed.

You can apply this same way of thinking about color balance to the 3 photos here:

Balancing to still get those warm tones, without making them too warm, and giving the blues an extra boost to really push through. In the case of the lightning photo, I was able to get a bit more purple rather than blue when the lightning lit the sky, while keeping that warm glow from the garage light. Keep in mind that during the lightning photo, the sky outside was already very dark, and I was using the lightning to light the sky. I could really get into a whole thing about night photography as well, but I won’t in this post. Quick note on that – any other posts you would like to see related to photography, sign up and let me know! I’ll send you emails when I post new posts like this one, and am totally open to any questions from the community that I can answer – Click here to sign up.

Another example involving some darker night time photography. You can see 2 different white balances of the same photo looking at the two photos of the greenhouse. One I balanced to look closer to how it looked in person, and the other I balanced to look colder, which I like more. It makes that red in the flowers really pop. Also dolphin hat.

The final 3 photos are both cases where I balanced just to give a warm tone late at night. The first photo was taken as I was walking around Denver, Colorado. The second photo is a spot I had stopped at in North Carolina (I didn’t even notice the cat just hanging out when I took the photo.) The final photo was taken at Wildwood Park in Mentor, Ohio. This gave the photos the warm feel I wanted them to have.

I could go on and on about all of this, but I’ll just stop here. Maybe I’ll explain some more photos in other posts for anyone interested.

I also would like to include a photo of the incredible sunrise I was greeted by when I walked to the top of the stairs and out onto the overlook. That was such a beautiful morning.

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