Self Portrait In CTO

A rather interesting technique I blatantly borrowed from the Strobist blog takes advantage of a fun feature oft overlooked in digital cameras - white balance. Most of the time, all people care about is that what is white in front of them comes out white in the picture, rather than shades of orange or blue.

Why not take the mid-day sun, and turn it into what looks mid-night? So I set the camera white balance set to 2,500 Kelvin (very blue), then aperture dialed down to f16 to make noon sunlight look like late evening (a small aperture makes things dimmer).

Then I grabbed my strobe (a SB-800 at 1/2), put it on a stand, pointed down at my face. The strobe was fitted with a full CTO (color to orange) gel, which given the white balance, came out as the equivalent of white light.

A little selective desaturation in photoshop and wham! Spiffy new self portrait.