Gels, i.e., intense color, are quite a popular venue to explore currently in photography. I’m down. It’s fun. The playground of the photographer’s imagination, writ in bold, splashy color. A swatch here, a blast there. I jumped on the gel bandwagon in Vegas recently, working with the irrepressibly talented Will Styles. Talented and physically supreme, he became a piece of creative human architecture in the studio as I ladled color onto his physique.
Ran an image from this session last week on our Instagram, and had a few questions pop up about the light controls, number of lights, etc. So here we go.
A lighting plan is important, but the wonder of it is in the deviation from the plan. It’s literally like stirring a paint bucket with various shades and seeing what happens.
First off, these are all Profoto strobes. A and B series lights. Did not use LEDs or any type of bicolor steady light sources, though in the studio, with complete control (i.e. access to darkness) steady lights could work well. With flash though, a shot like above where Will goes vertical in motion I am more confident of sharpness.
Grids! Grids, both fabric for the softboxes, and magnet grids for the Profoto A10 and A2 lights are important. As is the Profoto grid set, which will pop into a regular magnum reflector.
A multiplicity of lights! You want the grids to control where the color goes, and not let the light ramble around the set, as you would if you were using a biggish softbox, which creates lovely but meandering photons. The gels and grids have to hit, sometimes very hard, and in specific places. It can speak to numerous light sources, such as the nine light setup below.
Adjusting! Lots of lights get moved in the course of doing a set like this, some are occasionally hand held. Lighting for specific areas can logically leave other areas unlit, which is ok, until, it’s, you know, not. Then crew has to step in quickly and play with a gridded light, hopefully something of a smaller source, to pop a section of the photo to life. The maneuvering gets pretty full on when you get another beautiful body in there, such as Alexis Acevedo, a phenomenal dancer/athlete/bodybuilder.
More on this amazing twosome in a future blog. In the meantime, thanks go out to the crew. Las Vegas based-photographer Brian Friedman was awesome on the set, as well as photographer Kelly Fogel. Both are wonderful photographers and just terrific to work with – big thanks. In the not-so-distant future, videos of the shoot will arrive via the artistry of MD Welch, based out of Reno. And can’t say enough about the professionalism and atmosphere of the F11 Rentals studio in Las Vegas. An excellent, complete studio to work in. Super staff.
And gear. All shot on the Nikon Z 9, and really gave the new 85mm f/1.2 a workout here. Phenomenally sharp at 1.2, super fast and accurate AF response.
It’s a colorful world, indeed.
More tk….
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