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How Do You Work With Gels?
 photo: Troy Paiva from: The Light-Painter of Mojave D: An Interview with Troy Paiva http://www.ballardian.com/light-painter … troy-paiva ------------ One way to work with gels is to confine them to distinct planes of an object ot a person's face. Green and magenta are complementary colors. If the green and magenta were to overlap they'd produce a pretty monochromatic, whitish light. But photographer Troy Paiva doesn't let them overlap.  photo: Troy Paiva Here again, his use of purple and yellow is close to a blue and yellow complement. If they overlapped they'd not be very colorful. ------------- Be sure and visit the article for some nice work of his: http://www.ballardian.com/light-painter … troy-paiva ------------- I tried something different here as an experiment:  10 degree grid and warm light on face. 20 degree grid and cold light on face and torso. Where they combine the light is relatively neutral. The falloff is cold. As the orange fades off and the blue remains there develops a magenta phase to the falloff. I was hoping to develop that idea further - the notion that gelled lights crossover with planned results other than white. --------------  photo: Troy Paiva Totally separate objects http://www.ballardian.com/light-painter … troy-paiva Aug 12 08 03:27 am Link -------------- What sorts of ways do you work with gelled light? Aug 12 08 04:39 pm Link Kewl stuff. I try and only do non color correcting gels for when I am looking for special mood or changing the color of gray seamless. Aug 12 08 05:24 pm Link I am fond of my blue gels for the moon light effects I use  Aug 12 08 05:27 pm Link I don't even use gel in my hair. This is beyond me - BUT YOU GOT ME COURIOUS! Aug 12 08 05:31 pm Link damn, i failed at gels, just not my thing haha Though this makes me want to play around with them more now Aug 12 08 05:33 pm Link Orange on a blk b/g with fog  Aug 12 08 05:34 pm Link I very rarely use gels, so not much practice. But after reading this thread: https://www.modelmayhem.com/po.php?thre … 946&page=1 I decided to play around for a shot a few days ago: 2 gels wrapped around a 10 degree honeycomb and a 20 degree honeycomb  Aug 12 08 05:38 pm Link . The complement of blue is orange. . Aug 12 08 05:43 pm Link I used 3 strobes, one with a 3/4 cto, one with 1/4 cto and the third with no gell  Aug 12 08 05:54 pm Link Here's a link to one of my favorites shot with the use of a gel: https://www.modelmayhem.com/pic.php?pic … id=5608858 This was shot at about 2pm with the sun still fairly high. I used a 3/4 CTO on a Hensel strobe with beauty dish. I set my WB in the cam to about 3700. This image was basically right off of the card, with only very minor touch up work. The gel essentially blocks blue light, thus creating the illusion of the sunset sky. Very cool! I also enjoy shooting with the "Bastard Amber" gels to just add a little of that "golden glow" to the model, when appropriate. Aug 12 08 06:01 pm Link Man, I want a mannequin now... that would be so much easier than running back and forth from a chair with the timer set! Aug 12 08 06:05 pm Link I love using gels to highlight the separation of backdrop and subject. https://modelmayhem.com/pic.php?pid=7827829 Aug 12 08 06:38 pm Link I rarely use gels, but I wanted to create a black beach look. We did this mid-day in a garage.  Aug 12 08 06:41 pm Link Rick, when will you be geling/not geling ME?   Aug 12 08 06:44 pm Link Aug 12 08 06:46 pm Link RSM-images wrote: In color theory, two colors are called complementary if, when mixed in the proper proportion, they produce a neutral color (grey, white, or black). Aug 12 08 06:47 pm Link I like this concept. How do you make it happen? I'd really like photos with it. Aug 12 08 06:48 pm Link RSM-images wrote: You are thinking of 'subtractive' colors - (better called multiplicative colors) Aug 12 08 06:50 pm Link Jessica Rabbit wrote: Not soon enough for me! Aug 12 08 07:22 pm Link Rick Hughes Photography wrote: Most def:) Aug 12 08 07:24 pm Link Etherealized Image wrote: Keep in mind that you can't use bastard amber on a dark-skinned model. The gel then has the effect of stealing the warmth out of their skin. You're left with an alien grey effect. The darker the skin, the more pronounced the effect. Aug 12 08 08:18 pm Link I just clip 'em to strobes with a reflector dish sometimes...     Aug 12 08 09:14 pm Link For my moving lights, it's all dichroic filters. Here's the betrayal scene I lit for a local version of Jesus Christ Superstar. All lighting and effects that you see are mine.  Aug 12 08 09:26 pm Link Using gels on a black background can get you all kinds of effects. Especially if the background has a bit of rough surface.  Aug 12 08 09:34 pm Link I totally love gels...I just tape them on my SB800's. I have about 300 different colors to choose from. So now you're wondering how I got that many, right?? It was easy.... I just got on the Roscoe website and requested a gel sample book. They sent it to me. then I disassembled the book and the gels just happen to be the same size as the SB800 head. Aug 12 08 09:34 pm Link oooh good thread. Aug 13 08 02:08 am Link  photo by Troy Paiva I love this guy's stuff  photo by Troy Paiva Aug 13 08 02:56 am Link Red and Yellow gels...   But I must say, the ones above are breath taking... Aug 13 08 03:04 am Link If I had known the Mojave airplane boneyard let people shoot there like that...  I'd have done it myself by now Aug 13 08 03:16 am Link I love experimenting with gels. I recently did a product shoot for a glass blower using a mirror, black background, dry ice and blue gels. It came out really cool! This Troy Paiva photographer does really excellent work. Thanks for the thread and inspiration! Aug 13 08 03:20 am Link I love working with gels.  Aug 13 08 08:35 am Link I used a red gel in an image in a Hooters for the bg where the model had on fireman's pants and suspenders. Aug 13 08 08:45 am Link This is a basic try to give a different look using a yellow gel  Aug 13 08 09:05 am Link Ken Rieves Photography wrote: That's pretty neat. Where was the blue light placed? if you don't mind. Aug 13 08 03:29 pm Link The late Dean Collins had a cool thing using gels. He made a frustum out of foamcore and painted the interior shiny black  Then he taped a few hard-edged strips of color to the wide mouth and put the small mouth over a strobe. The result was so blurry that instead of crude strips you saw a nice gradation of color. Aug 13 08 06:58 pm Link One interesting thing about throwing a lot of gelled light around is that color is not as good as value at revealing form.  the original scene  constant hue but the original values - form is revealed  constant value but the original hues - form is destroyed. SO when trying to keep your subject 3D, don't evenly light from all directions with different hues. That is weaker than allowing the subject to have variations in value. http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color11.html ----------------------- In other words, in HSV, the Hue channel is harder to understand than the V (or L) channel Aug 19 08 01:47 am Link Here's one experiment I did trying to light the internal reflection zone in a martini glass. Background is 1/8" smoked plexi sanded with 120 grit. I did one with a magenta backlight, and the saturation zone above the glass turned orange and looked like a fireball.  RoscoLux 83 and 39 Aug 19 08 02:10 am Link I know there is not set ratios, but how do you keep the main light from wiping out the gelled light? Is the gelled light set higher or lower than the main light. I plan on expirimenting but trying to figure out where to start. Aug 19 08 02:31 am Link digital Artform wrote: That's highly deceptive, since the hues in that image reveal nothing of form. Aug 19 08 02:33 am Link |
