Video: Flash Photography Lighting Gels

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In photography, lighting gels and effects in Photoshop are sometimes used to alter the appearance of photographs in order to create a unique, warm picture. Experiment with lighting gels and other materials to change the appearance of a photo with tips from a professional photographer in this free video on photography.

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Video Transcript

My name is Anthony Maddaloni and I'm going to be talking about flash photography lighting gels. When I first started using a digital camera with a flash on it, I would find that my images just looked sort of, they looked sort of blue, sort of cold. So what I did was I took an orange filter, a gel so to speak, and I went to a good lighting store and I put this gel, which was really just a piece of light colored material and it was a warming gel, and I would tape it to the head of my flash, and as I was photographing, I would keep it on the camera or I would use it as a bounce and It would give certain scenes a warmth to it that I lacked previously without using the gel. Now you can also have this effect in Photo Shop and in the menus on your camera, but I find that using the flash with the gel still works the best. Now different colors of gels produce different effects. You can use a blue, you can use a yellow, you can use an orange, amber. One of the best ways to see what effects these create is to practice and just experiment. Experimentation is one of the best ways with gels and flashes to see what you get. And they're really, I mean really fun to use. You can say, "well, I really like the way this looks" or "I really like the way that looks". I like keeping different gels in my bag so as I'm shooting on location and I'm thinking what I want this image to look like, I could easily go and grab a gel. They're fairly inexpensive. You can get a number of gels for probably under fifty dollars. And so they're really nice to have. They'll give you a variety of looks to your photography. And that's how I use gels for flash camera photography.

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Flash Photography Lighting Gels

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