Notes

• A few days ago I posted a shot I'd taken on the wrong white balance, which actually ended up really making for a cool shot (I thought!). Whoops, I did it again! Again, this was a mistake, shot on tungsten white balance on a gorgeous sunny day in London. I realised right after taking the photo and changed the balance for the rest, including a few more of these guys enjoying their lunch. However, this was my favourite shot with them looking away from each other, so I decided to make a feature of the blue colour cast.

  Processing info: I tweaked the colours using a Curves layer, using a reverse S curve in the blue channel (to lift blue in the shadows and reduce it in the highlights) and minor S curves in the red and green channels to accentuate the slightly cross-processed look. I also added a B&W layer set to Soft Light to put a little contrast into the image, but the key to making it look the way I wanted, with some detail in the shadowed wall and in the tarmac, was to duplicate the original background layer and apply some Shadow/Highlights adjustments to it. If you go too far with those controls you end up with a hideous HDR-esque effect, but used with some restraint and some lowered opacity it's great as a quick and easy adjustment to put a little something back into an image that's nicely contrasty but not quite got enough detail going on.

Camera & Exposure Information