All digital cameras have a colour correction system that’s designed to counter the different colour temperatures of light.
Sunlight, shade, tungsten and flouros (to name a few), all create their own colour casts. Our brains naturally accommodate for the changes and so do most cameras (most of the time) when the white balance control is set to auto.
While the purpose of the white balance control is to compensate for different colour temperatures it can also be tricked into adding some weird and wonderful colour effects to your images.
Most cameras offer a variety of preset white balance modes (such as sunlight, cloudy, fluorescent, incandescent, etc), while some allow you to set a specific colour temperature, say 3000° Kelvin.
The trick to adding colour casts to your images, is to play around with these settings. If you’re shooting in sunlight, try the flouro or incandescent settings.
In shade, dial up the sunlight setting. The beauty of digital is that you can see the effects of different settings right there on the camera's LCD screen. Experiment and have fun.
Words and images by James Ostinga. Article first published in Digital Photography + Design magazine.
Correct white balance.
Blue.
Green.
Red.