Some of you may have seen in a previous post that I had set up a little  workshop on how to use gels in photography portraits. Well, last night was that day! And I'm pretty happy with how the whole thing ran!

I allocated an hour setup time, 3 hours workshop, with the first hour being alot of the essentials in both studio lighting, triggering, and how to use gels. We then built up our first light setup with a single light, then added a second, moved it around, showed the difference between using grids and removing them in the exact same setup, and fine tuned that setup before giving the trigger over to the attendees to shoot their own shots.

During their shooting time, myself and the model had inputs to improve composition, different angles to shoot, and things the models are looking for when working with a photographer.

We then moved to a second setup which added a third light, introduced the concept of subractive colour (colours adding together to create white light), and used a white light alongside the gels for a more pastel feel and clean light as the key light.

Our last setup would be 2 coloured rim lights, in this case magenta, and a blue key light to light the model. Our first blue we used was light and gave us a more subtleness. So we switched it out for a denser and darker blue for richer tones. Once the attendees started shooting, we also introduced the idea of placing items in front on the lens as little elements of diffraction.

We finally wrapped up with a little discusion on working with models, the importance of putting your work out there, imposter syndrome, and reiterated how things never go right on a shoot. We decided these things were important to portray to the attendees as working in a studio and with profesional models can be intimidating at first and the expectation of gettings things "correct" can add so much pressure, especially when you are experimenting or learning a new skill.

I have a couple of perfect examples of this! I had planned on tethering to show images, but lightroom didn't work. AT ALL! I had used Captureone for it all before but decided not to renew my license. Lightroom just wasn't detecting my XH2 no matter what I did, so after half an hour I had to abandon the idea. Instead, I left the lighting diagram I made as refernece for each setup displayed on the laptop, which decided to go to sleep and not unlock for over an hour! My thumbprint scanner just decided to not work at all and I couldn't even get the keypad or password box to open. My laptop just bricked for a good hour for no reason because why wouldn't it?! A few other little hicups we had too were grids not fitting reflector dishes, those dishes also wasn't magnet (for attaching gels), and a lose kettle plug socket on a flash head that required adjustments to keep the head powered on. I could probably give more examples but who cares. Even with these hiccups that happen on every shoot, we powered through and the attendees got to see these things happen in real time and understand that things always happen!

In all, it was so much fun and I got some really good feedback and it was great experience for future events I'm going to hold. I'd definetly recommend everybody attend at least one event (even if it's not one of mine), and get a feel for how other people work. This photography event was about using gels to create portraits, but also about working with models and the in studio setting too. This combined experience was one of the biggest confidence builders for one of the attendees. The event gave him more of an understanding on using gels, but also the confidence to use them more effectively, and to work with models at the same time. Being able to help provide that kind of experience makes it all worth while!

Get in touch if you'd like to be informed of future events I'll be running and I'll start a mailing list for them!

In the meantime, here's some gelled light setups from the shoot.

Our first setup. A 2 light setup that we ended up using an orange gel to go alongside the teal

Set up 2. We used the same colours as setup 1 but added the white beauty dish in

Set up 3. Very lower key and saturated than the previous setups