Building on what I discussed in the last article, let’s take even more control of the white-wall background.  Below is a series of shots showing that the wall can be made any color we desire (assuming we have colored gels) using a simple flash.

To produce this effect I set the flash on the floor and angled it up and toward the wall.  This provided a bit of a gradient to the illumination, as you can see clearly in the photos below.  For the gray-scale images in the last lesson I used the bare flash.  Here, I covered the flash with various gels.  That is the only difference.  If you think about it for a few moments, you should be able to figure out that the light was at the lower camera right of each image.

Changes in saturation, whether white/gray or depth of color were made by varying the light output.

Red gel

Orange gel

Yellow gel

Green gel

Blue gel

Adding colored gels to your flash produces great results as you can see above.  My white wall became much more useful!  Remember, an important key to this technique is to have the subject a good distance from the wall.  This is necessary so that you can light the two independently.  It’s also the reason why photographers love backdrops.  Using a backdrop of the color you want allows you to work in a smaller space.

I mentioned it briefly above, but if you want to increase or decrease the saturation on the background color you can do that by increasing or decreasing the intensity of the light you are pushing through the gel.  More light will yield less intense color, and less light will give you deeper richer color.  That may sound a little counter-intuitive to some, but try it out and you’ll see the way it works.

One tip: Shoot manual on everything including ISO so that your camera does not make any decisions for you.  Otherwise you will have a difficult time predicting the effect of any change in the light level.  Take your time and get the exposure where you like it, and then begin varying one thing at a time until you get a shot that really makes you do the happy dance.  That’s what I did!