Small Flash Tutorial: Lights and Gels Techniques to Build Atmosphere

StepThree

Erik Valind

We’re not looking too shabby now. Except at my current settings of f/3.5 at 1/200, ISO 320, I had effectively killed all of that ambient light that drew me to this scene in the first place. Let’s get that ambience back and add a little more of our own to balance things out. Note: I temporarily turned off the key light to get a better visual on this next step.

The easiest thing to do is to drag (slow down) our shutter speed—now 1/50—while bumping the sensitivity slightly to a nice, round ISO 400. Now that existing overhead light starts to burn back in and lighten up the graffiti-covered walls in our background. As an added bonus in spilling everywhere, it also acts as the perfect hair light on our model’s head and shoulders. It’s a good thing we had already warmed up our Speedlights to match. In this sample photo we also added a third light from down below. No elaborate modifiers here though—just some more of those CTO warming gels, the included diffusion cap—and firing it all through a Lastolite TriGrip 1-Stop Diffuser. These subtle lights from above and below will do wonders to open up our final image.