Photographer's friends: GELS

Gel is what we call a colorful transparent film that is applied on the light head in order to modify the color of the subject or background.

Now that we're done with a boring part - here's what we can do!

What happens if you stick a golden gel on your strobe and direct it at the black background:


If you point it at the white background, chances are you won't see any color. Same goes with some colors and grey backgrounds. Black is best.

Personally, I can't imagine my life without color. For me - it's all about color and when I discovered the gels, I felt a tremendous relief - now I didn't have to spend all that money on various colorful backgrounds! And when I was playing with the light, and light fell on the model accidentally, I discovered the mood I can achieve by letting is spill like that:



Or you can leave a flash directly behind the model (set a zoom longer if you're using strobes with zoom like I do), and you'll get a nice halo around your model - sort of a vignette, that you don't have to create later in photoshop - but that goes with any light.

Here's what you can do if you add some sort of a grid to the light:



Just make sure it's at the right distance, depending on whether you want harsh shadows or smoother. If you leave it too close to the flash, you won't see any shadows at all, and if it's too close to the subject - the lines will be harsher.

You can use gels outdoors to create an effect of sunset/sunrise - stick a golden gel on a flash and use it with any light modifier whether it's a reflector or a softbox.

You can match it with model's clothes - like in this portrait, some red spill on her hair matches the shirt:



Again, that worked because she had nice black hair. Would it have worked if she was blond? Probably, at another angle... I would try to highlight using it's transparency - put the hair directly between camera and light instead of leaving light above the hair.

The possibilities is what we're looking for. If I have gels with me, chances are, I'm going to end up using them, where appropriate, and, sometimes - inappropriate. Heck, why not - that's how we learn :)

What I use are the little chunks from swatch book that you can get from B&H. They are also sold in rolls and pieces, but for those who use off camera flashes - this may come very handy:



Enough to stick it on a flash head with a piece of tape.

I hope this is useful, feel free to add to it or ask questions - always happy to help with what I've tried and seen myself.