One of my favorite charity events I do each year is the annual Veteran’s Benefit Banquet at Cal State University Fullerton. Last year they wanted the shots on a basic gray background but this year I decided to try to spruce it up a little. Using the same gray background I wanted to try to get some kind of theme going on the background. Since I was running with my minimal lighting kit, I only had three speedlites to work with and one was the key light and the other was the fill light, this left only one for the background. While I could have used a single color, I really wanted to try something different. I took the backlight and covered half of it with a red gel and the other half with a blue gel and took a test shot.

First Test Shot

This wasn’t too bad but the blue wasn’t showing up as much as I wanted. Back into the gel kit I found a darker blue and tried a second test shot.

Second Test Shot

Ok! Now we are getting somewhere. I wished I had taken the white background so I would get a red, white, and blue effect but since I only had the gray, this would have to work. Time to stick a live subject in.

Live Shot

Due to the height, the colors start to mix and become more of a purple. Ideally I would have liked to have mounted the background light on the top of the backdrop stand which would have made the blue and red stand out more. Actually, if I had enough lights I would have liked to have had blue on one light, red on another, and a bare third light to try to create red, white, and blue stripes.

Although it worked really well for one or two people, the test was was it would look like with a group, it didn’t take long before a small group (we actually shot groups up to 10 people with this same setup).

Group Shoot

Not too shabby for a 1 minute gel setup. This has really inspired me to try to get even more creative with gels so stay tuned and see if I can come up with something really interesting.