Photography technical file: gel lighting.

In this weeks photography session we learned about how to use gel lighting. Gel lighting is a good technique to use if you want to create a feel to your images by having a coloured filter over the model, for example a blue filter may feel quite calming and a yellow filter may feel quite summery. This was a good technique for us to learn as we will be creating SS16 collections and the gels often make the pictures feel summery and bright, which is a strong feature used in spring/summer advertising and editorial campaigns.

Here is an example of how to set up the lighting when using gels.

You will need to have one light with a gel on facing the background and one light with a gel facing the model, or on some part of the models body. You will then need a light facing the model to light them up normally. When using gel lighting it is often about experimentation and trying to find the right look, you can experiment with changing the colours or merging colours to create a new one. I thoroughly enjoyed this lesson and found it to be very informative. Gel lighting is a simple way to make your pictures stand out and look different. I will more than likely use this lighting for one of my advertising images or the editorial as this technique seems to have been used for the Chanel L.A Sunrise collection.

Here are some of the images we took during the session.