That’s right. The question isn’t whether to gel or not. If you use studio strobes or battery powered flashes at some point you are going to want to use a gel. The question is why. Don’t be scared.

The Drive Home © Zeke K

I said don’t be scared!

Five reasons why to gel your strobe:

1. Balance strobe color to ambient light. In other words make your flash look the same as a lamp, etc. Very handy.
2. Balance the ambient light to your strobe or the sun. Same idea here, only you are gelling the lamp, etc. Handy, but I don’t do this one very often - okay, never.
3. Color your backgrounds. This is nice. You can turn a black, gray, or white background (wall, sheet, seamless paper) into any color of any shade with just a strobe and a collection of gels. If you don’t use this technique, I strongly recommend you give it a shot. If you already use it, why are you still reading this paragraph?
4. Trippy color-ama. This is using gels to make light that has little to no basis in reality for an interesting effect. A great example is the work by Troy Paiva at Lost America. His image Coffin Door (below) taken in an airplane graveyard was lit with two flashes, one with a green gel, the other red.
5. Simulate practicals. Practical lights are normal or exsisting lights. They are the key to creating motivated lighting for your images. They could be a lamp, window light, light from a TV, etc. In real life these lights all have different color temperatures. In the image The Drive Home (above) I’ve used red gels to simulate tail lights from another car and a blue gel for dashboard lights.

BONUS: For a 15% discount on gels for Nice readers read my review of Photogels.com.

The next time you’re thinking out a shot, think about if color matching, color contrasting, or color simulating would make your idea more effective. If the answer is yes - Gel!

Nice!

Coffin Door © Lost America used with permission

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