WARM UP AND STAY COOL

James Paterson shows you how to combine flash and colour gels to warm up a portrait while preserving natural-looking skin tones

- James Paterson

Off-camera flash can be great for portraiture; you can use it to pick out your subject, and give your images a unique style. But many of us who use it pay little attention to the colour temperature of the light our flash is blasting out, and by controlling the colour, and our camera’s white balance settings, we can create all kinds of interesting effects.

Measured in degrees Kelvin, colour temperature describes the ‘colour’ of light, from warm orange shades (lower Kelvin values) to cool blue shades (higher values). Natural light shifts back and forth along the scale at different times of day, from morning warmth to midday cool to sunset warmth again. We can alter our camera's white balance so that no matter the colour of the light, white objects appear white in our photos. If we choose to add light of our own, we can tint our light sources with gels to work in combination with, or contrast with, the ambient light.

But here's the mind-blowing part: we can create a warmer scene and enhance those sunset vibes, not by warming our flash, but by cooling it down. This may sound counterintuitive, as surely a warming gel warms the scene? In fact, this would tint our subject's skin tones orange, so if we wanted to keep the skin tones natural, we'd have to cool the image in post to correct it. So, if we reverse this process by directing cool flash light at our subject we have to warm the white balance to correct the skin tones, which in turn has a doubly warming effect on the rest of the scene.

THE SETUP USING COLOUR CORRECTION GELS ON LOCATION
Get set up to work with off-camera flash, and learn how to shift colours to produce wonderfully warm backdrops