This is Canon’s Red Line Challenge.
This Red Line Challenge is about finding the light in the dark.
When the sun has gone down all the light sources around you have different colours
and at night, they really come out strong.
Using coloured flashes is a really cool way to show
the three dimensional parts of structures.
So in this image I had one red flash on the right hand side
and green on the left hand, and I think without
using coloured flashes the whole structure of the building
would have not come out as strong.
Colour is such a cool thing
because somehow we connect an atmosphere with colour.
When it’s orange we think of warm temperatures,
or if we have blue colours we think of cold and cold snow.
So you can really create an atmosphere
just by changing the colour of the image.
What’s great about these effects is they are actually really easy
once you understand a couple of simple tricks.
First, we need to talk about white balance.
When you tell your camera to use the wrong white balance
you can actually get some crazy effects, without doing any post production.
You just need to get out of auto mode, switch to manual white balance
and you can start experimenting.
Give me a smile…that’s good.
I want to take some portraits with Anne and
I want to show you how I play with the colour.
In this case I’m using cheap craft paper
and we’re going to see what kind of effect it has to the image.
The idea behind this image is when I put orange paper on my soft box,
I tell the camera that this orange is the natural white,
everything else will fall into a deep blue cold scene,
and I think that’s going to look pretty cool.
Because I’m using an orange paper I need to
bring my white balance all the way down to a very low number
so I can get the neutral white.
Just look up like you did before.
Yeah this really looks cool
and I was hoping to get that effect of
having two different colours in one image,
actually this would be really hard to do in post production
and with this cool trick I can do it straight in camera.
We arrived at the gravel pit now and it's just
a wonderful location and perfect for taking pictures.
This evening I’ve got the studio flash that I use normally
for lighting large areas on bigger action scenes,
but of course you could also do this with a torch or a camera flash
and some coloured paper.
The only thing you need to know is you need to bring
the light closer to your model to get the same effect.
Right now I want to light up Anne with orange light
and I’m going to set the white balance to the lowest point
I can get so she will look more or less neutral
but all the background will be faded in a deep blue colour.
I think we’ve got it, yeah, perfect.
So we started with the orange paper and now
we’re going to switch and put some blue paper on.
When we put a blue paper on the soft box we can,
of course, reverse the whole effect and set
the white balance on a very high number.
The feeling should be that we are in the middle of a desert.
Just do another pose, maybe hands on the side.
The cool thing is, it’s all in camera,
we didn’t have any post production on it.
That’s it!
Sometimes you get into situations where
you have a lot of different light sources around you.
Some are warmer, others are colder.
One trick is you can flatten them out
If you just put the white balance to one limit
and with that you flatten out all the different light sources.
And that’s kind of a cool trick.
The light has gone now and it's completely black,
now is the perfect time to get creative.
I found this little hill made out of rocks.
I found this beauty, a pile of rocks and stone,
nothing special.
I want to light it up from both sides,
from the left and from the right,
and then we are going to have a strong back light
and we’re going to put Anne on top of the hill.
The set up looks good, we’ve got fog,
quite dramatic.
I really love those images, when there’s particles in the air
and you can play with the fog and the light.
So that's the plan.
Look straight to me, and your arms on the hip
3,2,1, Flash!
Ooh, that looks beautiful.
That’s really a cool shot!
We’ve got the coloured light from the side and
then we’ve got a little bit of fog in the background that is lit up by the blue light.
We just added a little bit of colour
and we got such a crazy picture out of just a small rocky hill in a gravel pit.
These are just a few ways of how I play
with colour and how I tweak them.
The good thing is it’s all in camera
so you don’t have to do a lot of post production to them
and you get great results.
Go out, get some lights, get some coloured paper
experiment with it, have fun
but please always remember, stay safe and
stay within the guidelines of where you live.
This is Canon’s Red Line Challenge.
We want to see your light in the dark images
Visit the website to see how you can enter
and what you can win.
There’s also some great inspiration
from other Canon Ambassadors.
Get out there, get shooting,
We can’t wait to see your creative images.