Lessons
Class Introduction
05:21 2Color Theory
10:11 3Shoot: Introducing Gels
17:37 4Shoot: Adding Warmth with Gels
08:30 5Shoot: Dual Colored Shadow
06:43 6Shoot: Gelling Background Color
18:04 7Combining Light Sources Overview
06:48 8Shoot: Light Shaping Tools
22:36Shoot: Red Gel on Red Background
12:04 10Shoot: Grid Spot, Defining Color
07:54 11Gradient Color Overview
04:36 12Shoot: Creating Gradient Color
29:47 13Shoot: Split Gels, Warm and Cool Color
25:54 14Long Exposure Overview
03:37 15Test Shoot: Long Exposure with Gels
28:42 16Shoot: Long Exposure with Gels
12:47 17Critique
28:39Lesson Info
Shoot: Dual Colored Shadow
I just wonder, for my curiosity and for experimentation sake, let's just bring this light over, Chris. Yeah. Can we run that cord from somewhere else? Yeah. There's one right here. I'm definitely in no man's land right now. I'm in no man's land, I don't know. I've never done this, so we're in uncharted territory. Alright, I'm just gonna bounce this light down here too. Alright. You got power comin'. There you go. Alright, just walk this one over a little bit, Chris. This one has a blue gel on it, right. Just try to bounce them both off that bottom there. Yup, we'll test it with you, Chris, before we bring Godfrey over You got it. There you go. What's that one set to over there? I'll check right now. (camera clicks) That one's at six. Alright. Is he here? And he's doing this. Just (laughs) yeah, cool. Alright, it's a little hot, but let's bring him over. Godfrey, come over. Right. And suddenly we have like a dual-colored shadow, right? We have a blue and an orang...
e shadow, just two lights off that floor. You can come over there, just where you were again. Yup. And bring your hands up, yup. (camera clicks) Alright. There we go. Yeah this is looking good. Just bring this light up, just feather it up a little bit. Yeah. This guy? Yeah. Yeah, cool. And turn it towards the wall. (camera clicks) Yeah. Cool and get, any sauce on this guy? Yeah just a little bit, what we were lookin' at before. Here's a little more. It's lookin' better. Yeah. (camera clicks) Just noodling, just pan this light up to see what it's looking like. Look at that, that's night and day. So this one's now just feathered, just kinda hitting the top wall. Might be a little bit bright, gonna drop it down. Yeah. Yeah, check that out on this monitor. So yeah, just for this crowd, I mean. Looking fierce. Fierce, fire and cool, right? So that's like a subtle little change, not too crazy with the color. I think those orange and blues look, they work well together. You know? I don't know where they fit into the whole color world, in theory of color wheels. But you can come out just a minute, Godfrey. Right we're gonna get a little bit more. I get some other people, love, could you just grab that silver card out from the back? Yup, Chris, you're gonna walk forward with the big light and put the beauty dish on it. Silver card comes out from the back, yeah. T-Bone, could you grab that blue light. (group laughs) Bring it to the left side of the set, alright? Yeah, you can strike that completely, get that out of here. Alright, I'll try to do much less work today. Paulette would like to know, "The colors of the light transform the colors of the clothes." Can you talk a little bit about wardrobe and your models and how you look at color on the wardrobe. Yeah, sure, I think stayin' away from black clothes is a good thing 'cause the black is not gonna, just, there's nowhere for the color to go. You know, it could still work, it could still be a highlight or something like that, but there's kinda nowhere for the color to go. I choose something between like a middle gray to a lighter tone so the color can wrap around stuff, so that's a really good question. Yup, quick reset here. The quote's asking about, here's a question form Mr. Baggins. Mr. Baggins. Why don't you put the gel directly on the light so you can use a smaller piece of gel? Yeah, well, with these lights, Mr. Baggins, they get, our model lights get very hot. Using speedlights, there's no reason why you can't even use the little gel packs that you get samples. Tape 'em right on there. It's the way to go, right? I don't know, you look at the studio, I like a lot of stuff, right? So when I buy gels, I buy a lot, you know. I go there, so I'm using big pieces away from the model lights so they don't melt onto the model lights. And also, you'll notice everything's like not, I have a crazy world of gels over here we'll look at. But this to me is a pretty light tone, right? You know? So that's like a lighter tone, but everything we're doing here, we're getting rid of all the white light, really taping this stuff up, and hell of a lot of work between me and Chris before we all got here, just staging all this stuff. 'Cause otherwise we'd be taking gels on lights all afternoon and nobody would be having fun. So, the more prep work you do, the more ahead of the game you are, we have a whole bag of Skittles over here, colors of the rainbow. I have a nice teal color here. This is my wife's influence on me, she's a designer. And I would probably never put these colors together. They're very 80s and they're sweet together. And she approved, she's like, "I like those colors you chose." Alright, we're back here now. You wanna put some e flat on this for that side light? Yeah. This is what we're gonna do. You mentioned dark colors, how do you deal with somebody with wearing like a suit? I noticed you had a lot of pictures with people wearing suits and those tend to be very dark colors. How do you influence colors with that? Well maybe we could look at that. Maybe we could look, do you have a darker jacket, Godfrey? Anything dark? You didn't bring anything dark today? (Godfrey speaks off microphone) Darker gray. Yeah, I mean, it'd be something we could look up. Maybe we could get something on standby, could just throw that on him. Or I could jump in with my black tee, it'll show up. It's just not gonna show up as rich, you know? And we could use it more as like an edge light or an accent light or background light and create some separation between, like if I'm in a dark suit, why not just do what we're doing in the background darker, right? I like where we've been going, but maybe everything's feeling for me a little bit too pastel and I wanna get a little bit more darkness and juice to Godfrey here.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Vitamin Dee
Great class if you're wanting to learn how to work with gels! This class will take you through the process step by step as you build your shooting playbook. I enjoyed Clay's honest and simple approach. Clay and his assistant, Chris, make a great team as they show how gels work and show you what not to do. They make learning fun!
Magda Mazur
I really enjoyed the course and have learned a few new techniques. Every photographer is a different artist, and I do not try to judge them by the way they proceed, but by the knowledge they have, use, and are able to teach. Clay and Chris have great teamwork and a lot of fun with this.
Doug Richardson
I found Clay's classes and teaching style worked very well for me. For example, Clay's method of first testing one light in a multiple light set-up and the adding the other lights one-by-one was great. I recommend this class for anyone working to add different lighting styles to their work.
Student Work
Related Classes
Lighting