As a photographer you tend to have your favorite times of day and seasons to take pictures. For me it’s morning light and the Fall. What do they have in common? Cool light. Seriously, I love the freshness of morning light with all it’s possibility and optimism, it may be one reasons I’m morning person – but I digress.

Cool light, as well as colors tones, can be associated with tranquility and nature or when dark and contrasty, they can be moody and gritty. It all depends on style and what the artist is trying to convey.

I will throw a little science in just for fun: As we discovered in my post on the color blue, we perceive these cool tones through an optical illusion called Raleigh Scattering. These shorter wavelengths have a temperature and that is measured on the Kelvin scale, rather than degrees of Fahrenheit or Celsius. On the scale the higher the temperature number the bluer it will be and the lower the number the warmer or more yellow it will be. (wikipedia)  Kelvin may sound familiar from your high school science class OR depending on your camera model, you may have Kelvin (K) as an option as a White Balance setting along with sun, shade, tungsten, fluorescent, etc.

Side Note: White Balance (WB) is a whole blog post of it’s own, but if you are feeling creative and adventurous we recommend you play around with your WB settings and see what happens to your images.

As the weather is heating up, we thought it would be fun to do a study of all things cool! For the next few weeks we will be capturing cool light and cool tones, if you would like to join us on this color adventure post your photos on our FB page or use the hashtag #IACWcoolvibes on Instagram. We will be sharing all the pics here on the blog. Can’t wait to see your cool world through your lens!

Stay cool,