Working with gels is a fun way to bring color to your image by changing the color of your background and creating different colors of your shadows. Here are Hannah Couzens' 3 steps on how to work with gels to create a more colorful portrait.
Step 1: Mount an OCF Beauty Dish Silver on the Profoto B10 Plus, the key light in this image. Choose a light pattern to light the model and place the B10 Plus accordingly.
Step 2: Select the color gels you want to fill in the shadows with. For this image, Hannah chose "Peacock Blue", "Light Lavender" and "Rose Pink" from the OCF Color Gel Starter Kit. Hannah wanted the two colors on the background to work together so the background wasn’t distracting but different enough to still maintain interest.
Step 3: If you are using several colors that are similar, like in this case, use a Profoto A1X as a rim light to avoid colors bleeding into each other. By adding the hair light at the back, Hannah ensured that the pink gel as the fill on the face didn’t blend into the violet on the background and kept some separation.
Tip
Using a silver beauty dish gives more shadows and contrast which allows your gels to pop.
