How To Get Blue Skies In The Camera

Here's a quick trick to getting rich blue skies, in camera, at mid afternoon. Today's image has blue water and blue sky. The easiest way to intensify blues, in camera, is to shoot in Tungsten White Balance. I first heard about this trick in one of Joe McNally's books. After that I saw it brought up in a couple blogs I follow. Scott Kelby's, McNally's and a couple others. McNally used the technique to get dramatic sunset, environmental portraits. His use was to gel and off camera flash with a full cut of CTO (Color Temperature Orange). If you have a Nikon SB 800 or SB900 Speedlite you got a set of gels with your purchase. If you have a different flash you can get a set of Rosco gels called the "Strobist 55 Piece Filter Kit" from B&H Photo in NYC. What you'd do is set the White Balance on the camera to Tungsten. Then put the "Tungsten" conversion gel on the flash. That'll balance the light from the flash to what the sensor in the camera is expecting. What I did with today's image was to do everything except use a flash. In other words, set the White Balance to Tungsten and you'll get deeper blues in your skies. I did start out by saying this would be a "quick trick". Have a good day.