Feeling Blue

Last Updated on December 24, 2012

If you’ve ever seen a video crew out shooting anything, you might have noticed that one of the first things the videographer does it to point the camera at a little white card or something nearby, like a car, for instance, that’s white.&nbsp  He then presses a button or two or flips a switch on the camera and then is ready to actually shoot.

This process is called the “white balance” or “color balance.”&nbsp  As sophisticated as today’s video cameras are when it comes to rendering color properly, they still need this one bit of help from their human handlers:&nbsp  once the camera understands what white is supposed to look like, and what white actually looks like under the current lighting conditions, indoor or outdoor, it can handle the rest on its own.

We don’t think of light as having a temperature, but it does.&nbsp  Sunlight outside has a much higher color temperature than artificial light indoors, so without a color balance, something shot indoors might look more yellow or orange than it should and something shot outside might look more blue than it should.

Compare the two photos at the top of this page and you’ll get a great idea of what I mean.

When I walked outside this morning to walk the dogs, the whole day looked blue.&nbsp  Not that deep beautiful blue that you see when you look up at the sky on a bright, cloudless summer day, but rather the kind of blue in the photo on the webpage linked above.&nbsp  There was just a tinge of blue everywhere I looked.&nbsp  It wasn’t particularly cold out, at least like you’d expect it to be if you see a day that “looks cold.”

Things just looked off.

Yesterday was a particularly rough day at the old workplace.&nbsp  This economy is being felt everywhere.&nbsp  Without going into specifics, a new plan was put in place forcing some changes that will be felt for a while.

The way the world looked when I first stepped outside this morning seemed fitting somehow.

I think I’ll spend a little time searching for that white balance button today.