We're Gellin'
Since I started using lighting equipment in my photography endeavors, I often find that I'm pleasantly surprised by my results. One of the main things that I'm attracted to when it comes to strobe lighting is that you really get the chance to build your shot rather than stumble upon it. I love natural light---I think every photographer does---but there's definitely something satisfying about something being my light.
That being said, sometimes "my light" still acts in ways that I don't expect it to. My friend Holli and I met up yesterday because we needed portraits of ourselves. We quickly knocked out some standard headshots which left two photographers in a studio with a lot of lights and time to kill. Holli had brought some gel filters which we decided to play around with. She pulled out one red, one blue and we draped them over my speedlights.
I set the lights up 6 or so feet from our white wall and pointed them at one another. I set them at the same power and had Holli stand smack in the middle of them, figuring that they would simply make her half blue and half red: cool stuff, right?
What I really didn't take into account is how the setup would affect the background. As it turns out, the blue light hits Holli and continues to splash against the wall on her opposite side: the red light does the same, creating perfect balance between the colors.
I actually proposed this setup somewhat jokingly but loved the way it came out and spent the better part of 30 minutes playing around with it until I got the shot I wanted.
We went for one other setup afterward. Seeing the colors blend in the previous shots made me think about how else I could gel and blend the lights.
The resulting setup was a bit strange, but effective nonetheless. I broke out a 30"x30" softbox, fitted it with a blue-gelled Canon 600EX-RT and placed a snooted 600EX II-RT with its clip-on tungsten filter directly in front of and centered in the softbox. Then I squeezed myself between the softbox and the snooted light and shot from there.
The softbox is large and close enough to me that it swallows any shadows that my body would otherwise cast into the scene. It throws a blue hue over the whole scene while the orange light pops a small orange highlight where I need it.
If you're just starting with lighting, I would actually recommend playing around with color filters a bit. The effect itself is fun, but it also gives you a very accurate depiction of what each light is doing.
Apart from that, I suppose the main takeaway from this shoot is just to relax a bit and go with the flow. Shooting with another photographer who is also interested in what the light's are doing is definitely very helpful. The different setups can be fairly time consuming; we were shooting for about three hours. The biggest things are just to be patient and keep experimenting until you get the effect that you want.
Equipment: Canon 5d mk iii, Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM, Canon EF 70-200mm II f/2.8L IS USM, Canon 600EX-RT, Canon 600EX II-RT, Canon Speedlite Transmitter ST-E3-RT, MagMod MagSnoot, Lastolite 30"x30" Ezybox Softbox, Red and Blue Gel Filters
