We all know how easy it is to tweak the hues of a photo in post production software like the dreaded photo@#!%, a word we do not speak here at light painting photography, but do you understand what the hell you are actually doing when you change the color? Well friends what you are doing is changing the temperature of the image. All light color is measured in degrees Kelvin, named after engineer and physicist William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin. We could get into his scientific theory but I would have to pretend to understand it which I don’t. Basically in the world of light painting photography all you need to know is that the lower the Kelvin temperature the “warmer” or more yellow the light appears and the higher Kelvin temperature the  “cooler” or more blue the light will appear. In the next post I’m going to get into white balance, why color temperature matters, and how to get some cool effects by tweaking the white balance of your camera in turn changing the color temperature of your image and keeping your light painting images SOOC (Straight out of Camera). Check the chart below.