This is positively the last set of shots currently in my catalogue from Holme Fell. It was such a beautiful autumn afternoon that I couldn’t resist.
Setting the white balance of the pictures is interesting when the light is like this. The sunset was very purple/orange and you’d think we would try and keep that colour in the shot – that’s why we shoot at sunset, isn’t it? But I find that a very strong sunset colour cast can flatten the picture. You can see this effect yourself if you take any picture and adjust the white balance in (say) Lightroom all the way to either side. The 3D look of the picture is lost as everything becomes the same colour. So in many of these shots I’ve removed much of the sunset colour cast so that the different colours of the scene can stand out – oranges of the larch trees, reddy-brown of the bracken, green grass and purple heather. I’ve made sure (I hope) not to go too far and make the scene cold. Hopefully the pictures just look “right”.
This isn’t the case with every sunset shot and more often I will leave the white balance set to a “normal” daylight temperature of 5000K and accept whatever colour results.