Party Time

Zusha's friend Zusi turned five and his mother invited us to their house for a little party.

The boys went off to play in the toy room.


Adel also went off to play. Her circle of friends is not limited to reflected ones.
Dovid is about a month older than her, and they always played quite nicely.

They played quite nicely, until... Dovid became mobile. {Cue suspenseful music.}

"Mama, there is someone attacking me."


"Erm... I think he's trying to eat me."


"He IS trying to eat me!"


"I've been eaten!"


While Dovid was eating Adel, the big boys were eating ice cream.


Notice the color difference in the photos above? I was going to edit them, but then decided to use them as a photo lesson instead.
The light in Zusi's kitchen is quite yellow. Which is why the first photo I took there is, well, yellow. Then I adjusted the white balance. On most cameras there is an option to set your white balance to sunny, cloudy, mixed sunshine with thunderstorms...

Oh, wait. That's today's weather forecast.

As I was saying, you can set your camera to sunny setting, cloudy, and a few types indoor lighting. Each type of light gives a different tint. Some are more yellow, some are more blue. Midday light is pure white. Early morning and late afternoon light is yellowish orange. Midnight light is nonexistent. When it's cloudy, the lighting becomes steely grey. Indoor lamps can run the full spectrum.
When you change the setting, you are telling your camera to compensate the tint by adding another color. If the light is too yellow, the camera adds blue to neutralize it and make it appear white in the photo. To a blue light, it adds yellow/orange.

Some cameras have custom white balance. You choose this option and a small square appears in the center of the screen. You direct the camera at something purely white (make sure the square in the center is filled with the white) and press a designated button. Your pictures will then be true to color.

When I came into their house, I had my camera set for the outdoors (white light). The yellow light made this picture really yellow.


I adjusted the white balance and took this photo. (It's not a great one- the lighting was weak so it came out dark. But at least the colors are true.)


Now my camera was adding a lot of blue to the photos to neutralize the yellow. So when we moved into the sunny toy room and I took a photo there, this is what happened:

It continued to add blue when I didn't need it any longer. So I adjusted the white balance again and took the two photos I posted first, at the top of this post.