Colour with light

Combine your flashguns and coloured gels to create a rainbow of photographic possibilities. Jason Parnell-Brookes gets creative…

Combine your flashguns and coloured gels to create a rainbow of photographic possibilities where you are the master of light and colour

White light comes from the sun and when placed into a prism separates into the visible spectrum we know as a rainbow. As humans, our eyes are capable of seeing around 10 million colours so it’s vitally important to learn how to control and complement colours in our photography. Light (and its colour) can be reflected, absorbed, refracted and more. For most of us our lives are dominated with the use of colour, from food to photography. So, with the skills we’ve already acquired in earlier parts of this ‘Teach Yourself Flash’ series, in this tutorial we’re going to place coloured gels over our flashguns and let the colours blend together over our model to produce portraits that look vibrant and punchy. Let’s take a look at how this rainbow fits together.