Question: I'm just learning photography and I found this picture 

<http://www.michaelkormos.com/blog/a-lovely-afternoon-family-photography-nyc-family-photographer>

The background was warm with yellow soft tones ... but the subjects are clear. I wondered how can I do that?

Yesterday I did a test, but failed ... lOLz ... It was a bright sunny day at the lake nearby and I changed the white balance color to warm and shot with the flash on her face. But ... her face become darker, as seen in this picture:

![Lake BSB and forest](https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5784/22887832505_b52defc5f7_z.jpg)

I want to know how to make her skin tone natural. Which flash gel should I use for this?

Another case, I did this shoot at night with very low light. 
I used off-camera flash and shot at the subject but I saw my flash became blueish, like the garden lamp. Here is the picture:

![2015-10-19_07-11-23](https://farm1.staticflickr.com/595/22262648996_70ce8d7c07_z.jpg)

how can I fix this color and, if possible, could you reference an article or book that can help me learn more about color and white balance?

Answer: 
First, to get this warm and yellow background, you need to be shooting in that kind of light, which generally only happens at sunrise and sunset. You can see by the catchlight in the eyes that the photographer was using a fairly large reflector to get light back onto the subjects. Also, you will notice that the super golden part of the light is way off in the distance - the further away, the more golden, so being close to the subject with the camera means less gold, more natural.

So it's essentially three things: shoot just before sunset, put the light source behind your subject and a good distance away, and use a reflector to get light onto your subject's face.
It's basically about how you use the gels and white balance in combination. Your subject is lit by the flash. Your ambient background is not. So you can make a color temperature difference between the two, in any balance you want, by adjusting the color of the light on your subject, and then white balancing to match.

If you want a warmer background with a neutral subject, then gel your flash to be cooler (blue), and then shoot or post-process to warm up the entire image until your subject is neutral. The background, which was its normal temperature in the original shot, is now even warmer. On the flip side, if you want your background to be cooler (say, turning a grey sky blue), then gel your flash to be warmer (orange/yellow), and then white balance the image in-camera or in post to get a neutral subject, but a cooler background.

See: <http://www.slrlounge.com/simple-way-change-color-sky-camera/> for good visual examples.