THE SET-UP VIBRANT STUDIO PORTRAITS

Tint your subject and backdrop by fitting gels to your light sources

01 LIGHT SOURCE

You can use colour gels on any light source, but flash tends to give the best clarity of colour and light. Studio heads like this are ideal, but you could equally use Speedlites. With two or more flashes, use a wireless trigger and set them to optical remote so that they all fire simultaneously.

02 BACKDROP

A plain backdrop like a wall, a pop up reflector, a roll of paper, or even a white sheet will give you a blank canvas on which to spray your chosen colours. A neutral grey roll like ours here is ideal, as it gives greater colour saturation than a simple white backdrop.

03 EDGE LIGHTING

Lighting the subject from the side or behind will create dramatic highlights. This works best with hard light sources like the snoot used to the right of our subject. The snoot has no colour gel, so it lights the face in our main portrait with ‘normal’ balanced light, while the shadows and backdrop are tinted.

04 GELLED SOFTBOX

A softbox to the left of the camera has been fitted with a purple gel. This light is set to a lower power than our key light (the snoot on the right), so it’s job is to gently fill in the shadows. At the same time, it tints the shadows purple, and adds variation to the blue light hitting the backdrop.

05 BACKGROUND COLOUR

In our setup we have a snoot and a gelled softbox trained on our subject. Our third light is angled towards the backdrop. This is fitted with a blue gel, resulting in a strong blue tint to the background. By moving the light closer or further, we can control the spread of colour.

06 POSING

Gelled flashes often work best when lighting the subject from the side or behind, but this means that you’ll need to pose your subject more side-on, so that the light touches the edges of the face and the figure. This is a great way to separate your subject from the background.