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On Sunday I had the chance to spend a couple of hours experimenting in a studio with Hannah as my model; there was no particular brief other than to play and learn.
I've used gels occasionally before to add highlights and colour to a scence but never directly on the subject, and I've been meaning to try something like this since I saw Jake Hicks' work (link mildly NSFW). His stuff is polished to within an inch of its life but his use of gels is masterful.
It was much trickier than I thought it was going to be. It's very easy to overcook the gels - but equally easy to under do them so they're barely giving the effect at all. There seems to be no reliable way to meter them - it's really easy to blow out a single channel while a meter still indicates that everything is fine. I'm guessing shooting tethered is the way to go but my camera won't do it (so I obviously do need an A7RII after all
)
Keeping everything under control meant using hard light sources, which added awkward shadows all over the place. I had to keep the lights close to keep the power down; I hadn't realised at the time that it wasn't positioned perfectly correctly so I've had to do some tweaking in post, esp to her lower arm.
The underlighting - aka horror lighting - was entirely deliberate; I was wanting the highlights above the eyes and under the chin. Whether it was actually a good idea or not is another question.
Anyway, it was a good challenge and remarkably revealing of lighting flaws, even if you ignore the gels. I'll probably try to do some more, just for the exercise!
Peachy Taylor by Simon Carter, on Flickr
Pullback:
Key: 70cm gridded beauty dish, feathered off the pallet
Front accent: teal gelled gridded standard dish reflector, bounced off a silver pop-up reflector
Rear: blue-green gelled gridded standard dish.
I didn't have two identical gels; that took a little tweaking in PS too.
I've used gels occasionally before to add highlights and colour to a scence but never directly on the subject, and I've been meaning to try something like this since I saw Jake Hicks' work (link mildly NSFW). His stuff is polished to within an inch of its life but his use of gels is masterful.
It was much trickier than I thought it was going to be. It's very easy to overcook the gels - but equally easy to under do them so they're barely giving the effect at all. There seems to be no reliable way to meter them - it's really easy to blow out a single channel while a meter still indicates that everything is fine. I'm guessing shooting tethered is the way to go but my camera won't do it (so I obviously do need an A7RII after all
)Keeping everything under control meant using hard light sources, which added awkward shadows all over the place. I had to keep the lights close to keep the power down; I hadn't realised at the time that it wasn't positioned perfectly correctly so I've had to do some tweaking in post, esp to her lower arm.
The underlighting - aka horror lighting - was entirely deliberate; I was wanting the highlights above the eyes and under the chin. Whether it was actually a good idea or not is another question.
Anyway, it was a good challenge and remarkably revealing of lighting flaws, even if you ignore the gels. I'll probably try to do some more, just for the exercise!
Peachy Taylor by Simon Carter, on Flickr
Pullback:
Key: 70cm gridded beauty dish, feathered off the pallet
Front accent: teal gelled gridded standard dish reflector, bounced off a silver pop-up reflector
Rear: blue-green gelled gridded standard dish.
I didn't have two identical gels; that took a little tweaking in PS too.
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