Jay P: Today we're going to talk about how to add color to the shadows using gels, not
the whole image, just the shadows.
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Jay P.: Hi, this is J.B.
Morgan, today on The Slanted Lens I've got Louise Houghton here with me.
Louise: Hi Everyone.
Jay P.: She's got a fabulous British accent and we're going to use Louise to show you
four ways to add colors to the shadows using gels.
Louise: Is that going to make me look better or worse?
Jay P.: It's going to make you look fabulous.
So let's get started, see what we can do.
Part of what makes this works is we've got a one to four ratio here.
That is, we've got a pretty dark, deep shadow area on her face.
That gives us an area to light up with the gel.
It's going to give us that deep area to work with.
If this was a high-key shot, we have very little shadows, it's going to be more difficult
to show.
You can do it and it does show up in a certain way, but the deeper your shadows are the easier
it is to show your gels in that shadow area.
Number one, this is probably the easiest and the one I've used the most often because it's
just simple to set up and quick to do.
You take a white piece of foam core, you tape a large piece of gel on it and you push that
in as your fill card and what that does is bounce the color of the gel into the shadows
on the side of the face and gives you a nice colored fill light.
Louise: Does it make me look blue?
Jay P.: It could make you look blue, but just in the shadows.
Won't do anything on the side of your face, it's just where the shadow area is.
Louise: What else?
Jay P.: Okay Number two, number two is you do the very same process, but you put it on
a mirror.
And what that does is the mirror is such a strong, strong light source that when you
bring it in, it really gives you a hard, hard color of light on the side of their face.
And so, this is much more direct and much more aggressive, but it gives you a really
interesting look on the side of the face .
Louise: So, is it kind of like when you have a reflector which is gold on one side and
silver on the other, but it just gives you a color option instead?
Jay P.: It's very much like that, but you're using the mirror to bounce the light back
and it's going through the gel and will put whatever color you put on the mirror is now
going to light the side of the face.
When you bring that around, it's going to just effect the shadow areas and it's not
going to light the front of the face.
Number three, this one is what people think of most of the time.
And that is you simply take a light, put a gel on it and that now becomes a light that
just lights her from the side.
It's going to give you a rim light, it's going to give you a bit of a hair light depending
on how you place it.
Louise: So I'll get some nice cheekbones?
Jay P.: You're going to get some very nice cheekbones from the side, if we get it up
high enough.
Louise: Okay.
We're learning a thing or two here.
Jay P.: Number four.
Louise: Last, but my no means least.
Jay P.: By no means least.
Number four is, we simply take a soft box or an octodome, you put the gel inside the
octodome or the soft box, we're using a rectangular soft box, and you put that above the camera
or below the camera and you simply use that as a fill light.
Now this gives you an interesting look, it adds color to the shadows, it does effect
the color a little bit on the face, it gives you a sense of kind of crushed or dark blacks,
you just have to make sure you dial it back enough so it doesn't overpower the face or
create too much of a color issue with your skin tone.
This is the one I love to use the most because it adds that color to all of the shadows and
not selectively from one side or the other, it just adds onto all the shadows on the face.
Louise: With these different four ways of using the gels, is there a certain way that
you would use one of them for fashion photos and another one for more portraits or does
one blend well with one more than another?
Jay P.: That's a great question, that is a great question.
You know, I think the light at the camera is a very fashion kind of look because you'll
see that a lot of the time used to be able to add a little color to the shadows and all
those shadows on the face has kind of a gritty look, it looks like you crushed the blacks,
very good look.
You see a lot of time in portraiture, they'll use a light from behind with the gel on it
and it gives you that little rim light and that really gives a nice look for portraits,
add just a little bit of a hint of a color on the side and just use it as a hair light
around into the shadows, that's used a lot for portraiture.
I think the one where you bounce it in with just bringing the card in can be used for
just about anything because that one is kind of just taking what light's there and just
a little bit of color in the shadow side and a really pretty look.
So there you have it, four ways to add color to the shadows.
I found a couple of these interesting though, I thought that the mirror would have been
a lot more depth of color, would have been a lot brighter color, a lot heavier.
It really wasn't, it was almost the most subtle.
So the light bouncing of the mirror is just very subtle, where as the...
Louise: I was going to say the first one it's a lot colder, but it's nice, it's just a very
different image.
Jay P.: Very different image, but you were getting all that cold because you're flooding
the whole image with that cold, so it changes the skin tones as well a little bit.
So the gel we used today in this lesson comes from the photographic lighting kit from Roscoe,
it's number 375, cyan.
That's a great kit, it gives you a lot of different options for different blues and
reds and yellows.
You don't have to do this with just blue, you can do this with any color that you want
and that really depends on what you're photographing and how you want it to look.
So there's a look at four different ways to add color to the shadows and I hope you found
that interesting.
Louise: Thanks for taking my picture.
Jay P.: You're very welcome, thanks for being such a fabulous subject, it was very good.
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Louise: Oh, my grandmother subscribes.
Jay P.: Well there you have it, her grandmother subscribes to The Slanted Lens.
So where can I subscribe to yours?
Louise: Mine is @louisehoughton_
Jay P.: There you go.
Louise: I think you tagged me in one already.
Yes, there you have it.
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Louise: See you there