Turning day into night

I had to go out for milk earlier so I took the camera along and tried something I’d been meaning to play with for a while: using white balance to create the effect of nighttime during the day.

By setting white balance to tungsten (approx 3200k) the camera produces cool blue tones we associate with night photography. I was looking for light sources to further the effect but they were far and few between. Instead I used radial filters in lightroom to create the effect of off camera practical lighting.

I limited myself to 36 exposures and kept 9 of them. I’m mostly pleased with the results and the editing part was rather quick and easy: create a feathered radial filter, move it off frame, warm colour temp and an exposure boost did the job. It was of course important to avoid having the sky in shots but beyond that – point and click, job done.