That pinky purple sky...

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Hi all,

I'm fairly new to photography (been at it about a year now) and desperate to take a landscape shot with that pinky purply sky look.
How do I achieve this? I read somewhere that you can use a FL-D filter (which I have access to), but when I looked into that further I couldn't see much online about it. Is there another way to create this kind of pinky purply effect?
 
Foilist said:
Hi all,

I'm fairly new to photography (been at it about a year now) and desperate to take a landscape shot with that pinky purply sky look.
How do I achieve this? I read somewhere that you can use a FL-D filter (which I have access to), but when I looked into that further I couldn't see much online about it. Is there another way to create this kind of pinky purply effect?
Click to expand...

The FL-D filter (IIRC) is intended for colour correction of fluorescent light for daylight film, presumably something the digital folk do with white balance. While it might give a pnky sky, presumably it would give a pinky everything else?

Surely it's really a question of being in the right place at the right time (and probably not accidentally)? Or I suppose there's always Photoshop or your favourite equivalent... ;)
 
As Chris says, be in the right place at the right time: Red sky at night, shepherd's delight.
Keep an eye on the weather forecast and look for good weather in your area for the next morning. Then look at the sky in the direction of the setting sun.
A few clouds low in the sky and you should be likely to get what you are after.
 
I daresay that a percentage of the shots you see on Flickr and such-like have had the pinky purple look added in Lightroom or similar. It's very easy to add a multitude of colour tones to your images using the cross-processing controls. Some may class it as cheating, but it's down to you to decide how you want your final result to look. Aside from adding something that wasn't there in the first place though, it's also a useful way to help recreate the scene as you saw it, rather than how your camera might've recorded it because you didn't get the exposure quite or something. :)
 
As Chris says if you try and use a filter, then this will effect the whole shot so you will end up with a colour cast over the whole photo, which is very unattractive.
As the guy's say its a matter of being around at the right time. At the moment Sunrise is approx 05.39 and sunset 21.23. Now you have to be on site before hand to set up so assuming you have got a location in mind (and i recommend that the first step in your quest is to find a location, sort out how you get there, how long from parking up to walking to the location. bearing in mind it might be in semi darkness. Make sure you know where the sun is going to rise and work out a rough composition, in the daylight!)
At sunrise the light tends to be more golden, however you can get red if it is preceding bad weather. Sunset same applies as above really, you need to be on site possibly an hour before unless you know the location well. Sometimes its much better to shoot without the sun in the frame but using the light it is creating. If sunset shooting DONT make the mistake of packing up too early ie as soon as the sun slips below the horizon more often than not the best colours are about 20 minutes or more after sunset and don't forget to look behind you, refraction can turn the clouds red opposite the sunset.
You can do this in Post Production but you need good knowledge of processing to make it look convincing.

I have studied sunsets for a fair while trying to predict when your going to get one.... its almost impossible .... there is an App i'm told but how good it is i have no idea...
Good Luck

PS One reason i say recce your location beforehand is because if you happen to want the sun in your shot, it may well be that the horizon is elevated where you are, in other words if there is a hill in your field of view, then the sun will vanish behind the hill (or other obstruction) earlier than the listed sunset time (obviously).
 
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I do like a bit of faux colour myself, for me anything other than a blue sky works! I've done that by being out in the golden hours and taking it as it comes, and I've also done it in post whilst messing around creating a look I want. One option not to overlook is grad filters - buy a cheap one and it will almost certainly have a cast of some kind on the graduated bit, you may get lucky and get a pink one!

Don't think you'll only have to resort to filters/photoshop trickery though, nature is a fascinating beast!

This is a wholly as shot image:

Pink Mist by Alan Jones, on Flickr

So is this, but the pink comes from the camera's inability to render colour properly in this case, it would find magenta all over the place when there should not have been any. Here I just rolled with it because it made for something different.

Cwm Ystradllyn by Alan Jones, on Flickr

Here's an extreme example of cheating:

Dinorwig 3-1-13 by Alan Jones, on Flickr

That was from the first trip out with that camera, things would be processed very differently today!
 
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