I've mostly used photographic gels to correct or "balance" color from my flashes to match the light in a room - tungsten or florescent(orange and green). A few time working as an assistant to Rick we used blue gels to set a cool techy or medical look. I had an aversion to using them in artistic ways - probably because I associate them with cheesy swimsuit model stuff from the 80s. Lately I've seen them coming back into style in my Instagram feed and yesterday I was listening to 'God's Favorite Customer' by Father John Misty - I decided to recreate the three gel look of the cover photo.(HERE). I assumed I would know how to do it - but I would rather practice now and be sure before I get asked at some point.
This is the set-up as the camera would see it.
The red gel to the left and the yellow hair light above looked pretty good. I couldn't quit get the right color on the left - I used a blue and a green gel and then used the saturation/hue slider in Adobe Camera Raw(or Lightroom) to correct the blues - being they were the only blues in the shot it was easy.
Opposite view.
This is the "straight out of camera" shot. I converted it to a jpeg with no real edits here to give you an idea of what I did in post. I knocked down the highlights from the hair light a bit, brought up the shadows, added some saturation and cleaned my skin some for the final image (at the top of this post).
With these short, colder days I always enjoy trying some new things inside the warm studio. Like last winter, I plan to do more of these posts.
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