Creative Lighting
Gels, colours, smoke, fog – there really are a million ways to add excitement and atmosphere to your portraits. And honestly, that’s what makes this side of photography so endlessly enjoyable. You can walk into the studio with a plan, throw a coloured gel over a light, fire up the smoke machine, and suddenly the whole mood of a shoot shifts completely. It never gets old.
The articles collected here are all about the love of light – the creative, experimental, sometimes slightly chaotic joy of pushing beyond a standard setup and seeing what happens. Whether we’re working with continuous LED lights for that smooth, painterly quality, or our beautiful Elinchrom strobes for sharp, powerful bursts of colour, the underlying idea is always the same: light is the most expressive tool we have, and it’s worth playing with it properly.
Gel lighting photography is a big part of what you’ll find here. Coloured gels can transform a portrait completely – a deep blue gel can make a clean white background feel cold and cinematic, whilst a warm amber thrown onto a subject from the side adds an almost theatrical drama that’s very hard to achieve any other way. We’ve explored everything from subtle colour washes to bold, saturated combinations that really push into the dramatic portrait lighting territory.
Throw in some smoke or a little atmospheric fog, add a lot of laughter, and that’s really the spirit of it. Some of the most striking images we’ve made in the studio have come from sessions that started with a simple question – what if we tried this? – and then just ran with it. Coloured gel portrait photography, atmospheric portrait photography, creative studio portrait ideas that genuinely excite the people in front of the camera as much as the person behind it.
Have a browse through the articles below. There’s plenty here to spark some ideas, whether you’re just getting started with gels or you’re already deep into experimental portrait photography and looking for your next direction.
A Single Bulb and a Seventeenth Century MoodNew
How Jess Became Red Riding Hood | Halloween Portrait Photography Ideas
Using The PMI Smoke Ninja Dry Ice Nozzle For Portraits
Fairy Light Photography
How to make a scene look cold
Video | How I Use Smoke for Drama, Depth, and a Bit of Magic
Video: Creating Stunning Portraits With Rotolight AEOS and NEO2
Video | Beautiful Outdoor Christmas Portraits
Lighting Up An Ancient Lecture Theatre For A Science-Themed Portrait
Video: Indoor portrait using a picture frame reflection and video light
Video: Indoor portrait of Megan with a tabletop reflection