The Magic of Gels

I bought a set of colored gels a couple of years ago at Imaging USA, a national photography conference that happens once a year, but I haven’t done much with them. I used my yellow gel on a self portrait but I hadn’t tried out the other colors so I decided it was about time.

Here’s the technical information for those that are interested…a gel is placed in front of a light to add color to an image. You can also get different gels that will help to balance the color or light in specific situations. I use something called a magmod which makes life so much easier, it has magnets inside so once it is on the light you can easily change the modifiers by just snapping them on and off. These images are actually shot on a dark grey background but by gelling my lights and aiming them at the background it changes the color to match the gel! Pretty neat!

I just decided to play and have fun and as you can see below I did just that. I also decided to try and recreate my passport photo….see if you can work out which one that is, enjoy!

Gels:

Pink:

Pink and blue:

Blue:

Purple:

Teal and purple:

Teal:

Green:

Orange:

Yellow:

Red:

Did you spot the ‘passport picture’?