It is often said that The Golden Hour ( aka The Magic Hour ) is the best time that any wise photographer should make use of to capture great photography. This daily phenomenon occurs an hour before sunset and after sunrise and golden it was indeed… literally.

The Golden and Magic hour of Kusu Island, Singapore.

These two photos were taken 1 minute apart. It’s amazing how the light changes with a blink of an eye ( or a click of a shutter )! Can you guess which one was taken before the other?

I love taking silhouette shots. I have never been much of a people photographer, but i do take quite a handful of people silhouettes against Nature’s great display. First being i love the artistic and drama of it all, second being i don’t have to obtain a signed model release for it!

General camera setting for all pics : 1/400s; F8; ISO 200; Exposure Compensation -1/3 eV; Hand held
I love dark and rich colors ( evident in my blog design ), and so a little Exposure compensation is in order, especially when taking silhouettes. A slight dial down should give that extra boost of color and contrast to your photos. Of course, there’s no hard and fast rule to photography. Your eyes are the best piece of equipment you can have. So let them do the talking and your fingers do the clicking!

Proboscis Monkey at sunset taken at Kinabatangan River, Sabah, Borneo.

People often ask me how i get the rich, saturated, vivid colors in my photos.
To publish photos on the web, it has to be in the color profile of SRGB IEC61966-2.1. You would notice that every time you directly save for web, the photo seems to loose it’s original rich colors as seen on your camera LCD.

There’s a couple of steps you need to take to publish photos in the right colors space on the web.

If you shoot in AdobeRGB :
Lucky you!
All you have to do is
1. Open your image in Photoshop,
2. Go to Edit > Convert to Profile > Destination Space Profile SRGB IEC61966-2.1

and tada! nothing has change! The picture retains it’s rich, saturated color as captured with Adobe RGB color space even when you Save For Web!

If you shoot in SRGB IEC61966-2.1 :
Well, lucky you too! coz all you need is one more step to achieve the above.
1. Open your image in Photoshop,
2. Go to Edit > Assign Profile > Profile Adobe RGB. You would immediately notice the image becomes richer in color and tones.
3. Next, Go to Edit > Convert to Profile > Destination Space Profile SRGB IEC61966-2.1.

Tada! nothing has change! The picture retains it’s rich, saturated color even when you Save For Web!

And that’s the secret. No need for complicated Photoshop filters or image adjustment. All you need is the right color profile!

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 19th, 2007 at 11:40 pm and is filed under Travel, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1. Kenelyn says:
   June 6th, 2007 at 6:15 am

   I think this site has just become a daily for me. kudos.
   ps. which one was taken first?

2. Ling says:
   June 8th, 2007 at 11:13 pm

   hi Kenelyn,

   thank you for visiting!
   The 1st pic was the one with blue skies… the golden one was a minute after

3. jjwgzone says:
   August 10th, 2007 at 3:03 pm

   i like U web VERY MUCH

4. C.S.Ling says:
   August 15th, 2007 at 4:08 pm

   thank you!

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