I talk a lot about working with other photographers to improve your skills, learn new tricks, and collaborate on projects together so I often attend group shoots whenever I can. This weekend we had a shoot planned with the LA ShootThis! group and as we were getting started, the rain started coming down. The sky was gray and ugly so I took a tip from my friend Chris Diset and set the camera’s white balance to tungsten and gelled the flash with a 1/2 CTO gel. This got the skin tones really nice but turned the dull gray sky into something a little more interesting.

We finally relocated into a dry parking structure for some more shooting and I chose a spot with almost no ambient lighting so that I could have total control over the lighting.

In this shot, I used a single 24″ softbox from BlackbeltLighting.com and had Amanda turned directly facing the light. This harsh angle provided a nice soft light on her face while illuminating the back wall at the same time.

In this next shot, I had pulled the softbox about 15′ away from the wall so that it wouldn’t light up the wall and then used a second flash with the same 1/2 CTO gel as before pointed at the side of his head to create the hair light.

With Kelsey, I didn’t want the lighting to be quite as dramatic so I placed a third light to camera right with an ExpoImaging Rouge Flashbender as a basic fill light. I still had the 24″ softbox and gelled hair light in the same position as the shot of JK above.

Moving the gelled light from the side to directly behind Kelsey’s head. we got a completely different look with a dramatic rim light effect.

To see more pictures from the event, check out my SmugMug Gallery.