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Lighting setup: Gelled portraits, or how to color-grade in-camera

Jun 21, 2023 by Jake Hicks Add Comment
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Gelled lighting can be tricky. It either totally dominates a shot or the colours get washed out and lose impact. In this deceptively simple lighting setup, I show you how to add an in-camera colour wash or global colour grade to your shots that adds a colour harmony to a portrait without overpowering it.

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How to create a vibrant portrait using simple full cover gelled lighting

Oct 27, 2022 by Jake Hicks Add Comment
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Controlling gelled lights can be tricky. We all struggle with washed-out or even muddy colours occasionally and the core reason for this, is your coloured lights overlapping and mixing.

The golden rule of coloured light is: you can only add a gel to a shadow.

The reason I repeatedly say this, is because coloured light doesn’t mix like regular colours. When we mix paints, the more colours you add, the closer you get to a muddy brown colour. Cast your mind back to preschool and you’ll know what I mean.

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How to create studio lighting setup for these futuristic neon portraits [mildly NSFW]

Jun 20, 2022 by Dunja Djudjic 1 Comment
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When you start using artificial lighting, it’s like a door to a whole new world opens up in front of you. There are so many different looks that you can achieve by just playing with the lights and their color, position, and intensity.

If you’d like to add some color to your portrait, gels are your “weapon of choice.” Mexican photographer Edgar Salgado gladly uses them in his work, and he shared with us his setup for two-colored portraits that look like they come from a future… Or a synthwave album.

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How to shoot a clean and simple coloured fill portrait in the studio

May 19, 2022 by Jake Hicks Add Comment
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Sometimes you just want a clean and quick setup to start a shoot off the right way. Sure, you may have a ton of creative ideas in store for later on in the day, but they may be new ideas you’ve never tried before or they may be more experimental. If that’s the case, I always find it smart to start a shoot with a tried and true setup that’s not too tricky to do, quick to set up and provides great shots each and every time.

That way, the team knows that whatever happens from here on out with the more experimental work, we’ve already bagged some killer images and everybody is positive about the setups to come.

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Create this amazing colourful effect entirely in camera using just 3 lights and gels

Apr 12, 2022 by Alex Baker 1 Comment
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How do you make white light? No, that isn’t a trick question. Most of us are fairly familiar with using different colour temperatures and even playing around with gels but if you get a little bit creative you can use gels and lighting to make some really interesting effects.

Commercial photographer Ron Hautau created these dynamic portraits using a relatively simple set-up and some basic physics. So how did he do it? We caught up with Ron to find out how.

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Lighting setup: Textured fashion lighting with coloured gels

Feb 23, 2022 by Jake Hicks 1 Comment
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I spent many, many years working in a busy studio that focused on quantity over quality. As photographers working there, we did our best to push back against this where we could, but sometimes you only had 20-30 minutes with a client to achieve a handful of different looks and sadly this invariably led to you often reverting to the simplistic, yet professional looking white background shots out of necessity.

It was ultimately the repetitive nature of this white background work that spawned my gelled lighting that many of you know today. It really was a simple case of ‘shoot something different or go mad!’.

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Create magic with this 3 light gelled portrait set-up

Jan 17, 2022 by Alex Baker 1 Comment
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Studio photography can be so creative. All you need is a subject and a light. But after you’ve mastered one light, the possibilities are endless. Ohio-based fashion photographer Ron Hautau created this striking series of coloured portraits using nothing more than a black background, 3 lights and some coloured gels. He explained to DIYP how he did it.

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Lighting setup: How to use colour gels outdoors

Oct 6, 2021 by Jake Hicks Add Comment
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You don’t often see photographers using gels outdoors in natural light, but why?

I think one of the core reasons you don’t see too many natural light gel shots, is that you need a lot of power and control from your lights to make gels visible in daylight. Whenever we’re outside during the daytime, sunlight has a tendency to creep in everywhere. Even when we’re standing in heavy shadow, there’s still a lot of light on us as the sun bounces around almost endlessly and sneaks into even the most shadowy areas. This is an issue for gels as bright, strong daylight will overpower and ruin a gel shot instantly, making the desired shot significantly harder to achieve over simply setting it up indoors.

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How to fake that gelled split lighting look in Photoshop

Jul 3, 2021 by John Aldred 1 Comment
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Using multiple differently coloured gels to light your subject and their environment has become a very popular subject over the last few years – and I’m totally not blaming Jake Hicks – but it’s not always possible to easily do in the studio. Perhaps you don’t have the colours of gel that you need. Or maybe there’s just too much colour spill to effectively get what you’re after.

It is possible to simulate the look of using coloured gels in post, though, thanks to Photoshop. And in this video, Unmesh at PiXimperfect shows us how. There are several ways you can do this, but the method Unmesh shows in the video is very effective and covers a bunch of different techniques that you can apply to a lot of other tasks, too.

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The must have tool for color addicts – the Rosco MixBook

Apr 23, 2021 by Paul Monaghan Add Comment
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Color.  Such an important tool to help bring a time, place, or even emotions into an image.  Wouldn’t it be nice to have something that makes working with color easier? Inside this little package is a new tool by Rosco called “Mixbook“. To help creators pre-visualize gel and LED colors.

Essentially Rosco has digitized the old gel swatch books, as you can see in my reenactment of a Rosco scientist at work. Note the old gels from my swatch book flying around as the new Mixbook arises from the smokey pot.

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Udi Tirosh: from diyphotography.netUdi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

Alex Baker: from diyphotography.netAlex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe

David Williams: from diyphotography.netDave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.

John Aldred: from diyphotography.netJohn Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

Dunja Djudjic: from diyphotography.netDunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

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