Laborarbeit: Einmal spannend bitte!
“I have such a boring job!” stated a friend of mine recently well knowing that her job indeed is a really important one – and is pretty interesting in general. Tefang is working as a researcher in geochemistries trying to find out more about the evolution of our atmosphere. Therefore she is collecting gas samples in volcanically active areas and searching for helium 3 and 4 within these samples by the use of a pretty cool machine – a so called “noble gas mass spectrometer”
Yet she pointed out that this part of the job – testing the samples – is indeed a boring one. As she made a website for her department of her institute she was struggling to make the labs look as interesting as they actually are.
There was the need to produce some more “scientific” mood in the pictures to give viewers this sort of Sci-Fi-feeling that got me when I arrived at that place the first time.
I was playing with white balance to give the white walls in the typical fluorescent lighting of a lab some more mysterious mood. Shifting white balance to a warmer color temperature than the actual fluorescent light has results in the blueish light you can see in the background of the pictures.
To enhance that effect even more I underexposed all the scenery with it’s “natural” light and put in some strobes to point out certain areas in the pictures. For warmer colors I used a color shifting gels (Lee 204 and 205). For lighting the interior parts of the machine a limeish green.
The rest was playing a lot which – due to Tefang’s “boring” job – was no problem. 
Thank you very much for your patience Tefang and to your bosses for letting me in the holy sites of CRPG Noble Gas Laboratory in Nancy/France.
