Hi this is Joe McNally for Adorama TV
and today I'm gonna talk about gels to influence the mood of a photograph.
Adorama TV presents Photo on The Go with Joe McNally.
So the first thing you do on location
is assess that location. What are the strengths and weaknesses
how much gear do I have? How much time do I have? How aggressive
can I get visually ok and I was working with the gentleman who
looked to me like he could be a film director and we are in this environment
that
projection kinda an arrangement you know could be a movie theater
so I used the graphic if you will, of the main isle
I put in in the main isle of the theatre so you've got this kind of
you know, sort of little bit a vertigo behind him here here's my subject
he's wearing a hat
Here he is right here.
Cool that's a photo subject.
Lighting couldn't be simpler.
actually almost all this was hand-held speedlights
except for the main light which was on an Avenger C stand
which was right here, and then Ezybox Hot Shoe Softbox right here.
2ft, softbox. White interior
very nice light goes with me everywhere
Simple, clean kinda character lighting drops a shadow on the far cheek all that sort of
stuff
we used a Tri Grip, a last light Tri Grip in here to bounce a little bit of
light up
into him but the key to the picture okay was defining him against this
background, this was a dark fear it could get really kinda murky if you're not
careful
so I gave two speedlights to people who are hand holding them
out in the audience right in here. I call this position
3 quarterback. That's just my language ok it's not particularly good English
but its
three quarters of the way to the background in the photograph, and it puts
a rim,
the speedlights, I have them control via my TTL
master flash or commander and they put little rims
on his shoulders, and the side of his face and define him
against the background. Also has the corollary benefit I've lighting the
seats
that are all in here.
But, the little kinda luxury item that I'll talk to you about right now is the fact
there's a hand-held speedlight back here,
Ok, it's firing down this way,
right in here ok, so speedlight is being hand-held
trying to make this thing work here there we go there's a speedlight
coming straight down here, putting a little bit of rim off of him.
It could be the projector light at the back of the theatre,
and projectors generally speaking, look to the naked eye
you look right at them, cool or blue. Hence
I put a blue gel on them. We call these theatrical blues.
There's all sorts gels I would recommend Lee Filters,
they make a whole variety of different color correction material
you can just about get any color you want
ok I just travel with the basic kit we call them our theatrical gels,
that's when want to get something dramatic and the little bit crazy
and then we also travel with our color correction gels
which we use to respond to very typical lighting scenarios,
like an incandescent temperature or a fluorescent temperature.
Hi, Joe McNally here for Adorama
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So gels can influence the mood, or
make a light look like something else. In this case I'm shooting at 1.4,
very shallow depth-of-field you can't even pick up in the photograph this is
actually hand-held.
There's somebody sitting on the stairs holding it up, you know like this.
It's got a blue gel on it and it puts that little rim
and gives me a little extra dimension to the photograph.
So gels, a handy thing to travel with. We always go with gels.
This is Joe McNally with Adorama TV and this
video segment was about using gels to influence your photographs.
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