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Hello, .

When we're making photographs, we gotta pay attention to camera operation, light, and composition.

There's only three things, but there is a lot to pay attention to in each of those things.

Sometimes, we get so caught up in camera operation and composition that we overlook the obvious.

Yesterday, while working with a photographer to troubleshoot a picture with a darker tonality than expected, the photographer felt it might have something to do with the white balance settings.

The first picture was of a large bed of flowers, and the tonality looked excellent.

The following picture, darker than expected, was a close-up of a single flower in the same transmitting light as the bed of flowers, so it had the same intensity/brightness as the bed of flowers and should have required no change in exposure or ISO.

I thought that white balance usually doesn't affect the image's tonality, but I imagine it could be if the camera malfunctions.

My first thought was that the exposure or ISO changed; nope, they didn't.

My next thought was, did the light change? Uh-uh, it was a sunny day with clear blue skies.

We determined that the white balance settings seemed to be working fine. 

Unless this were an intermittent camera malfunction that caused the white balance to affect tonality, maybe there was some camera malfunction going on that would need to be figured out by taking the camera into a repair shop.

When I asked the photographer to recall what they were doing when they made the second picture, the close-up, we determined a change in the light was the culprit after all.

Like I said before, sometimes, we get so caught up in camera operation and composition that we overlook the obvious.

Here's what happened.

When the photographer got close to the flower to make the close-up with the macro lens they were using, their body created a shadow on it.

Not noticing the change in light intensity caused by the shadow, they didn't make the tonality adjustment needed for the darker light intensity.

The lesson is that we always have to pay attention to the light we're working with, especially the light we see in our viewfinders.

I'll help you be a better photographer—study and practice photography with me. 

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