Rocks, Water, Fog White balance. We spend so much time worrying about getting it right, about making things look natural. We use white balance presets in the cameras, sometimes even set the Kelvin temperature manually using a grey card. Or we include something neutral in one of the shots to properly balance the photos later on the computer. Or we photograph using RAW. That way, no matter what was selected in the camera our software can easily change that and re-render the scene.

Other times, we intentionally shift the white balance to warm up the scene. Warm colors are popular, eye catching. So even in direct sunlight we may chose to set the camera to cloudy, or even shade.

But did you ever think of just going wild with your white balance and selecting something completely unintuitive, counterintuitive, just plain crazy?

In these photos, you can see how that can change the mood in the photo. Change in an unexpected way. Change in a way that you may, or may not like. But how do you know if you don't try?

The first photo is with the Camera Automatic white balance setting. Not exactly what it looked like to me on that beautiful foggy morning but fairly close, with some of the bluish cast removed.

Rocks, Water, Fog The second photo shows the subtle difference I got using automatically calculated white balance in Nikon Capture NX2. Just a tad more neutral. Subtle but different.

I still like both of these images. They do express the simplicity of the foggy morning when all of my compositions were very simple. The fog took care of that. No distracting backgrounds, just my subjects. However, there was something even more special about that morning, something that kept me there for hours!

How about changing the rules and instead of trying to capture a visual copy of the three rocks going for an emotional copy?

Take a look at the final image below. For that one, I selected Standard Fluorescent White Balance. It had nothing to do with the scene. Neither Mother Nature nor I brought any mercury-filled bulbs to the scene.

Is the mood in the photo different? I definitely think so. And I believe it better communicates what it felt like during the unseen sunrise hours with fog consuming everything around me. I think there's no reason to always follow the perfect factual visual replica. An emotional copy may just work!

Roc, Water, Fog

Three Rocks, Water, and Fog - A Foggy Sunrise on Lake Erie

Have fun balancing!