Smoke and Gels with Zara
Model : Zara Lee
The Set Up
LEFT : Godox Ad 600Bm light with 20” stripbox with grid
RIGHT : Godox Ad600 Pro II with 26” octobox with grid
Black paper backdrop
Neewer TL60 RGB Tube Light just in front of the backdrop
Smoke machine
A gel on the keylight gave too much colour
Creating the Images
The initial plan was to place lights behind the backdrop, and punch holes in the backdrop so the lights would shine through and be picked out by smoke.
I’d seen the idea on social media somewhere
However, I abandoned that idea when it was clear that it wasn’t going to work!
Either the lights were not bright enough, or there wasn’t enough smoke
So …. instead I placed lights either side of the backdrop and asked Zara to face to the right so the main light would illuminate her face
We tried variations on that simple idea with different poses
Colours
We experimented with different coloured gels on both the speedlights, blue seemed to work best for the rim light, and amber for the key light, although I ended up not using a gel at all on the keylight as amber was too strong.
We also varied the colour of the lightbar behind Zara , red green and purple giving the best results
RAW images in Lightroom Edited images highlighted in red
Final Edits
