About this week’s episode

This is the light talk where we discuss the light setup for one of our recent tutorials, namely the ‘How to create a colour pop in Photoshop’ tutorial. It’s important to note that this image has been retouched in Photoshop and it is not out of camera.

For this shoot we used three different light modifiers. First off we have the two strip softboxes to the back of the model to create a nice rim light. For the front we used a small octobox, placed high enough not to generate any shadows. All three of these lights were used without diffusing material because it absorbs too much light when working with gels. Otherwise we have to power up the strobes completely to the maximum power, but you still wouldn’t have enough pop in your image.

We shot the model against a 50% charcoal backdrop. If you move your model away far enough from the backdrop it goes from grey into black. We used a smoke machine to generate some smoke. Our final image didn’t contain as much smoke, but you’ll notice on the other images in this tutorial that it has some smokes in it. We also placed a poly board on the right hand side of the model to have some light spill onto her.

We did not use the professional gels normally used in these shoots. We worked with gels we found at a stationary store in stead. If you’re going to do these shoots often, make sure to get the professional gels.

Here’s a summary of the lights and modifiers we used:

• 2 X Elinchrom strobes on medium power.
• A strip softbox to create hard reflections.