Filters, my man... filters!
One of my favorite shots that I've taken was the perfect sunset shot with a person in the foreground - perfect except the sunset, due to smoke from a fire or something wasn't as orange as I would have liked. So, on goes an orange filter over the lens. But wait, I hear you say... wouldn't that make the person look like an oompa-loompa? Normally, but if you pop off a flash with a gel the opposite colour of the lens filter (in this case, blue), the flash neutralizes the colour added for anything close enough for it to affect - your subject, and leaves it untouched for anything outside its range (the sunset)... add a polarizing filter for a bit of contrast enhancement and voila!
I love playing with colour shooting film - the new 4 layer Fuji films with supersaturated colours are great for landscapes, Kodak's got a line of infrared films that do well for getting shots through things like water spray (waterfalls, etc), I've even played with orthochromatic film (truly black & white - very few greys - it's used to photoreplicate texts and the like) and tungsten-balanced film (good for concerts and other stage-lit performances). I hate to sound regressive, but digital photography with auto-seeking white balance really takes the art out of the photo.
It's painful to have to go back to lighting documentary-style after that... 1/2 CTBs and if the DOP is really wild, maybe even a straw on the backlight/hairlight... makes you feel like Michelangelo working as a house painter.
Bren R.
