Preschool portraits with gels

texxter · Jun 10, 2019

adamhiram said:
am curious if anyone has opinions on using colored gels on a neutral backdrop vs. a colored backdrop - in this case, blue paper instead of a blue gel? As long as I am lighting it separately, gels seem like a simpler solution, but I'm sure there are some limitations with this.

Your idea of using complementary colors is great, and works nicely. I have used the same thing for fun, and I was happy with the results - although using bright colored background in the studio is not something I gravitate towards. I enjoyed this fun session with an expressive friend - used a gel on the flash on the background, which was black:

I like colored backgrounds best when working outside the studio environment -- so I find a nice color out there and I may use it as a background, often with the assistance of on-location flashes. I mention this to give you another option, namely, use colored backgrounds already out there and bring your softbox to that location. Of course, it is also fun to bring gels to a studio location and use them against an existing boring background.

Often I just use colored walls:

Here I used a glass wall and put a gelled flash behind to make it blue:

For this photo, made in a corporate office room, I projected a gelled light against the background wall:

Derrel · Jun 10, 2019

I just want to reiterate: the photo I posted above of my son was made by firing flash through a blue gel and a dark background paper so that the original background was about the same exact shade as your blue. The yellow background was created in for Photoshop's selective color by merely selecting "blue", and tweaking the sliders. I did not use a yellow gel but rather a blue gel, which gave almost exactly the same shade of blue as you got.

Contrary to your idea, black paper works splendidly with gels, and gray paper works well also, but as JBphotography mentioned earlier, white paper is very prone to reflecting excess color to the back of the subject's head.so for example if you needed full power, with white paper you would need significantly, significantly lower power output to get the same density of blue,maybe as little as 1/16 or 1/8 power.

On a per-flash-output value, the darker the background is to start with originally, the richer and deeper the color. Let's say we shoot the background with 50 Watr-seconds of gelled light. The colors will be vastly different with black,gray, and white.

JBPhotog · Jun 10, 2019

I don't see any banding, Mac OS, Safari.

The images have an embedded colour profile of sRGB IEC61966-2.1 so other browsers should render them just fine, here's a crop from how I see it.

Derrel · Jun 10, 2019

I personally think that using a yellow or pink gel or blue gel on a white backdrop paper makes a lovely pastel shade, and firing a pink or yellow Gel at a brown backdrop makes a nice background, and black paper or black walls adapt well to being shot with a wide variety of gelled light colors. There are many different colors and shades of gel, and many different light modifiers and light output levels. It is really up to the photographer as to how a background color is modified or augmented by firing gelled light at the background.

JBPhotog · Jun 10, 2019

Not to hijack the OP's post but here are a couple of quick examples of gels on a white background. One head on each side fired into a white V-flat. Card on stand lit by 22" BD with sock and 16x22 soft box for fill, typical butterfly clamshell:
#1 Rosco 05 gel

#2 Rosco 312 gel

#3 No gel.

Derrel · Jun 10, 2019

Dean Collins did some good educational videos back in the days of VHS tapes, and a few of his talks and a few segments from those many tapes are now available on YouTube.

His original theories about chromazones are still out there, as far as I know. After his untimely death, his work was large taken over by one of his former assistant, who now has written several books, and has been a rep for Hasselblad. Tony Corbell is the now author and former assistant that I am speaking of.

Derrel · Jun 10, 2019

Collins had some really cool tips about using gels,which were extremely popular in the 1980s and into the 1990s. Today we see more and more digital gradient fills done in Photoshop, and today retouching that was impossible or extremely expensive in the 1980s is now within reach of many people. But there is great satisfaction in creating a particular color shade from a piece of cellophane or colored mylar.

One of the cooler things that Dean used to be known for was his tricolor background projection box, which was made up of three overlapped gels, and was made out of foamcore board material.

He used to write a monthly column in Peterson's Photographic magazine, back in the 1980s, complete with illustrations On how to pull off what were then considered advanced photography techniques.