Gels, i.e. bold colors, are quite a popular spot to explore nowadays in photography. I feel boring. It’s fun. Playground of the photographer’s imagination, writing bold, vibrant colors. A sample here, an explosion there. Recently, I jumped into the gel band in Vegas, working with unbelievably talented people. testament style. Amazingly talented and physically fit, he became a piece of creative human architecture in the studio as I painted over his body.
Run an image from this session last week on ours Instagramand some questions popped up about lighting control, number of lights, etc. So here we go.
A lighting plan is important, but its magic is deviations from the plan. It’s really like stirring a vat of paint in different shades and seeing what happens.
First of all, this is all file wardrobe. Range lights A and B. Do not use LEDs or any other type of two-color stabilized light source, although in the studio, with full control (i.e. access to the dark), stabilizer lights can be works well. However, with the flash, a shot like the one above where Will moves vertically, I’m more confident in the sharpness.
Net! Mesh, both fabric for soft box and magnet net for Profile A10 And A2 Lights are very important. The Profoto grid, too, will appear in a regular large reflector.
A variety of light! You want the meshes to control the position of the colors and not let the light spread around the set, as you would if you were using a large softbox, which produces lovely but meandering photons. The gels and nets have to hit, sometimes very hard and in specific places. It can communicate with many light sources, such as the nine light source setup below.
Adjust! A lot of lights get moved in the making of a set like this, some are sometimes held by hand. Lighting for specific areas can logically leave other areas unlit, which is okay, until, you know, no. The crew then had to quickly step in and play with grid lighting, hopefully something of a smaller source, to liven up part of the photo. Maneuvering becomes quite full when you have another beautiful body in it, such as Alexis Acevedoan extraordinary dancer/athlete/bodybuilder.
More on this amazing couple in a future blog. In the meantime, thanks go out to the crew. photographer in Las Vegas Brian Friedman great on set, as well as the photographer Kelly Fogel. Both are great photographers and it was a pleasure to work with – many thanks. In the not too distant future, shoot videos will come to the art of MD Welch, based on Reno. And can’t say enough about the professionalism and atmosphere of F11 . rental studio in Las Vegas. A great, complete studio to work in. Super staff.
And equipment. All shot at Nikon Z9and actually gave the new one 85mmf/1.2 an exercise here. Outstanding sharpness at 1.2 aperture, super-fast and precise AF response.
It’s a colorful world, really.
More tk….
Post Gel Sculpting in Studio! appeared first on Photographer Joe McNally.
