Shooting it: In The Blue (Using gels)

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This article will be focusing on using strobes to create shadows and leading lines. After I uploaded the photograph, I had more than 10 people asking me is it photoshoped, and how did I lit it. Well, it’s not photoshoped 😉 In this location I am basically shooting from complete darkness, so everything on the photo is created by the flashes!  I really enjoying doing some strobist works from scratch using colored gels to change everything about the location. Model for this shoot is Asuka! She’s really tough, and we are really good team together, I really can’t count how many times we have been shooting together for the past 2 years, this is really important for creating cool things!
Location – Nakatsu

Strobist info:
Bare Canon 580EXII with a Blue Gel on a 2.5m Flash Stand, outside of the warehouse (right) @Full Power Triggered by Pocket Wizard II PlusNikon SB-26 with a 80×60 Softbox & CTO – Camera Left, just outsude of the frameBare Nikon SB-26 with a Red Filter on the far left side pointing the wall with a Gobo, and making the red tint

Bare Nikon SB-26 for some fill pointing the model from the far side

All Nikon SB-26s triggered by Optical Slave

Location

Here is a nice location I found some time ago when I missed the last train to go home in Osaka, and I had to waste some time until the morning, so I decided to try finding some interesting photo locations. So here is Nakatsu 中津, this is just under the Hankyu Railway Station, a kind of old warehouse that’s not used, and it’s even open for us. Next to the warehouse is a parking, where I had my flashes on a 2.5m high flash stand, so I could have that shadows inside the place I was shooting! Model is the amazing Asuka! That location was so dirty that after we finished I was completely black, my hands, my jeans… my face! lol Don’t ask me how people stared in me in the train! lol Asuka was quite messed up too!

Lighting

First I wanted to make the shadow lines, so I decided to set up a flash outside of the warehouse. It has a blue gel for the color! For this I was using the Canon 580EXII a full power, so it is the “shadowmaker” in the photograph! Second as main flash for the model I have a Nikon SB-26 in a 80×60 Gridded softbox, as I wanted to limit the light just to the model in order not to kill the shadows from the outside flash. I’m having a CTO filter on that flash to warm up the model a little bit! Next, as a part of my point of view, I live mixing blue with red, so I decided to set up another SB-26 with a red gel to just add some red tint to the photo.

Gear

I am using my old Canon 50D for this shoot, with Sigma 17-70/2.8-4.5 lens. That was my main zoom lens when I was still using crop sensor camera, you can see an album with other photos of that combination here: CLICK! After I purchased my Ful Frame 5DMII I decided to sell that lens! I am triggering only the outside Canon flash by Pocket Wizard II Plus, and all the other flashes are triggered by the impulse of it, with Optical slave. That means that all of them need to see each other in order to flash.

Model: Asuka Nakagawa / 中川飛鳥
美容師、ヘアメイク、アクセサリーデザイン…美を創造することを愛しています。
作品全てが飛鳥のセルフプロデュースによる写真になっています。
She is doing hair & make-up, accessories design, and other things! Asuka is producing all the accessories for the photographs we take together!
In the end…
So in the end I would like to mention one more time about our new project called Creative Lightbrary! We started it recently with my friend Ognyan Dimitrov, and we are going to post everything connected to digital photography where we will cover our experience with different light modifiers, DIY stuff, lighting diagrams, post production, useful software and many other tips. Our main goal is not to teach but to give everything that is useful for your journey in the world of digital photography. Click on the logo below to check it out! Also follow our Facebook page connected with the project to subscribe for future updates, and we have prepared already many things to post soon! Here is the link to the page: Creative Lightbrary on Facebook

Comments

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3 replies
  1. Joshua
    Joshua says:

    The color and light is very outstanding, why not add a few tips in a future article, that is the color temperature between model and the condition, and post production of hue.

    Reply

Trackbacks & Pingbacks

  1. 15 HARD CORE LIGHTING SETUPS TO HAVE YOU LIGHT LIKE A NINJA | GUNAWAN QIU | Photography says:
    August 16, 2014 at 12:41

    […] If you ever wanted to learn how to creatively use hard light to create some drama this is a great shot. While the main light on the mode is coming form a softbox, the other light sources are either bare or gridded and gelled for effect… […]

    Reply

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