Its All A Question of Colour

The other day a couple of friends and I were having a discussion.  All of us had been out at roughly the same time on the same day and found the light pretty challenging.  The colour in it gave our images a funny colour cast.  Anyway, the conversation got round to an effect that both Bob (the deputy editor of Pixel Magazine) and I really like.  Bob cited this image of the Grand Canal, Venice by Colin Homes in particular as a point of reference.  I have to admit, I really find this image stunning.  The discussion got round to how the image was made.  We both realise that it had been shot on film with an incredibly long exposure at sunrise.  However, we weren't sure whether the subdued colour pallette was down to a trick of the light or some dark room trickery.

The next day I was driving to work and I noticed a near identical look of light at the edge of a fog bank.  As the day went on it was apparent that the fog was going to lift so I though I would try and take a couple of shots at the end of the day.  The idea here wasn't to create a nice image; it was to see if I could replicate the effect of the Venice image.

Unfortunately, I couldn't jump on a plane and fly out to Venice.  I'm just not that lucky to be able to do that.  So, I had to settle for sunny Barnoldswick, or in this case not so sunny Barnoldswick.  The sun had all but gone out of the sky but the effect was there.  Instead of a pink, orange, cream pallette, I have a grey, green and blue pallette (oh the joys of living in Lancashire!).

Back at my desk the files were loaded in to Lightroom.  It would have been easy to subdue the colour there. However, the images posted here have had both their Vibrance and Saturation increased and yet I still have the subdued colour pallettte.

So the conclusion was that yes, you can do it but the conditions have to be right.  However, we still suspect some processing trick as well.  We hope to be able to replicate it digitally soon.