White Balance

When doing photography there are many factors that come into play that make the difference between a good picture and a great picture, or one that is less than flattering to your subject. Often when I do photography I think that some shot will really be quite a dandy, but upon inspection on the laptop reveals itself to be nothing of the sort. Sorry, no masterpiece just yet. This was the case in the tomato shot that I have lounging upon this paragraph. You see, I went out fairly early on in the day while mr. golden sun was still shining nice warm light on down in order to capture a few shots during the "golden hour". If you don't know what golden hour is, well tough cookies I have explained it before. In any case, being the artsy fartsy chap that I am (not), I noticed our tomatoes were looking lovely in the morning light and thought I would shoot it, so that I could put it on facebook, because everyone wants to know about my tomatoes! However, it, like you can see above, did not look like the globular wonder I thought it would. Bob was lookin' a little seasick.
There are two reason this was the case, one was that it was shot in RAW and almost every shot will need a little work. The other was that the white balance was off. You see, not all light sources are created equal. Most of the time you don't notice this because God created us in such an amazing way that we do not notice most of the time that indeed the type of light we are seeing is different. Cameras are actually fairly impressive as well, in that they are made to analyze the type of light that is being recorded. However, people are not near as good at making stuff as God is (If you want proof, just ask someone who gets dialysis. Your kidneys are about the size of your fist, which is pretty small and they filter a lot of nasty stuff out of your body. If you need dialysis to do the work of your kidneys, it takes a machine as big as your entire body to do the same job as your kidneys. Yes, God is awesome.) so the camera can mistakes when it analyzes the white balance. and adjusts the image produced accordingly. Therefore, it takes a wee bit of post-production editing to fix the shot.
One way that you can do this is by finding a slider call "Temperature". If you slide the the little doflicky to the right, your shot will become "warmer" with the overall color being more orangy (hopefully the technical terms aren't too much). If you slide the doflicky to the left, the shot will become colder with the overall color being more blue. Cool huh? The other way I like to adjust the white balance is by using a custom white balance tool. It is the tool that usually looks like a dropper in the upper left here below.

All you need to do is click on the icon above, then find a spot on the shot that should be white, but most likely if the white balance is off is blue or orangish, and click on it. The shot should automatically adjust to the new custom white balance. If the shot suddenly turns all nasty psychedelic, then you probably clicked on something that wasn't white. Just hit Ctrl+z (if you don't have an Apple) and it should reverse the poor life choice you've just made. Below you can compare the difference between the two shots after I adjusted the white balance. I also boosted the contrast a little bit as well. Happy shooting! 

Shot info: ISO: 100, f/3.2, 1/500 sec with a 24 mm prime lens.