nique to create “blue moonlight” or a nighttime ef-
fect during the daytime.
I can do just the opposite by white balancing to
daylight and using tungsten light sources as accent,
rim, hair, or edge lighting and using regular flash
without any gels as my main light. As an example,
my studio lights have tungsten “modeling” lamps
(the light that is always on when your studio or
portable studio strobes are turned on). By simply
placing a 7-inch reflector on my monolight with a
20- or 30-degree grid behind my subject and aim-
ing it at their back or hair, I’ll get a beautiful golden
glow created from the white balance mismatch of
daylight and tungsten.
The key here is to drag my shutter so the camera
will pick up the less intense tungsten light from the
modeling bulb. I’ll make sure to turn off the flash-
tube on my studio monolights in order to do this. I
won’t worry if my shutter speed is^1 / 30 or^1 / 10 second,
as the real shutter speed for my subject is duration
of the flash (or my main light), so my subject will be
tack-sharp when the shutter button is depressed.
Most great flash units like the Hensel, Dynalite,
Profoto, or Broncolor lights have short flash dura-
tions, thus it gives me a great shutter speed to cap-
ture my subject.
One of my favorite places to utilize this tech-
nique is when photographing a model while in a
master bath area. Most of these rooms have glass
block windows that allow ambient light to filter in. By placing a^3 / 4 CTO on
the 22-inch Hensel beauty dish that will illuminate my subject and setting the
camera’s white balance to 3200 to 4000K, the light from the glass blocks will
turn blue. I often get some “spill” ambient light that will add a tint of blue in
the white tub, foaming bubbles, and the water that contrasts with the warmer
tones of the model’s skin. The end result is an image with great contrasting
colors, not just plain flash or white.
Give Your Subject a Tan.Most models today watch what they eat and
have read or heard about melanoma, skin cancer, so many will not bask in the
sun’s harmful UV rays or go to a tanning salon. Many use spray-on or liquid
76 LIGHTING FOR GLAMOUR PHOTOGRAPHY
FACING PAGE—Many photographers show models with windows
in the background—and often the glass has no color. If we add
a gel to the flash (as in this case with Shauna) then set the cam-
era to an opposite white balance, the daylight peering through
the glass blocks takes on the exact opposite color of the gelled
flash. In this case, I illuminated the model using a Hensel Inte-
gra 500 Pro Plus fitted with a 22-inch white Hensel beauty dish.
I then fitted it with a Rosco #3411 (three-quarter) CTO gel,
which converts the flash from 5400K to 3200K (more orange).
To compensate, the camera will add blue—equivalent to an
80A filter. As a result, the daylight will be saturated with the
blue color. Postproduction of this image was done in Adobe
Photoshop with a Nik Software’s Dynamic Skin Softener filter.
(CAMERA: Olympus E-500. SETTINGS: 114mm effective focal
length,^1 / 60 second shutter, f/8, white balance at 3700K, ISO
100)