I get that technically summer goes until September 21; but, growing up in Texas, school always started in August…which is why July has always felt like the end of the season to me! So enjoy this summer inspired post during your “last couple days of summer”. Lol…and in the same breathe, I will admit we get no respite from the Texas summer heat until October.

Anyways…Obviously with the pandemic happening outside, I haven’t been testing as much as I’d like; but, I’ve been wanting to experiment more with gels, and lucky me, I have younger sibs willing to sit around and pose for a couple hours.

Part one of my experiment was shot with Jennifer. At this point, I didn’t have a clearly defined theme yet. I just knew what color gels I wanted to use, and I told her to channel k-pop vibes. It was a fun shoot, and I was happy with the head shots; but, there were definitely things I wanted to do better for next time. For one, I was worried the colors were a bit too hot. Second, there wasn’t a story or feeling attached. Just a pretty head shot of a cute model, with cool lighting.

Midge was my second model, and by this point, I definitely knew I wanted to channel summer vibes. We styled him with a floral shirt, and sunglasses. I wanted to mimic the sunset, which is how I decided on the colors of the gels and the placement of the lights. We backed off on the strength of the speed lights this time: 1) one to fix my issue with the first shoot, and 2) it’s “sunset”, duh! I tried really hard to re-create pool water reflections by shooting light into an aluminium tray with aluminum foil filled with water, but I couldn’t get it to work!!! Such a bummer! But I was still happy with our final portraits.

This past Tuesday, I FINALLY got around to shooting my third experiment with gels. Tubbs was my model, and I wanted his shoot to fall into the same theme as the one I did with Midge, but I didn’t want it to be a replication. If Midge’s sub-theme was summer sunset, Tubbs’ might be summer after dark. So we propped with a palm leaf, and a green, and purple gel! You can see the couple of iterations I tested.

This is the original lighting set up, but I ended up going for something more subtle… keep scrolling! :)

I love this color combination, and the blue reflection from Tubbs’ sunglasses? Yes please. And since this is summer after dark, we went with ultra deep shadows.

All in all, I had a lot of fun with these, and learned a ton. I could totally recreate something similar for your shoot. ;) *wink, wink* *nudge, nudge

Anyways, here’s a bonus pic of my ghetto prop rig. It’s literally a faux palm I purchased from Michael’s, sitting on top of a filing box, weighed down with a HAMMER, and kept up using a pair of my shoes. *facepalm* but if it works, it works bro!

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Summer Vibes