Budget Studio Flag/Reflector Clamps (Platypus Clamp)

We all know there is a seemingly limitless amount of gear we can get for the studio and clamps seemingly make up a large part of that. We have the crab, duck bill, platypus, Quaker, super, mini… the list goes on and on, and although these clamps all do different things, they all have one thing in common - they can be pricey!

So to save a few quid, here’s an easy-to-find alternative to the somewhat pricey Platypus clamp. All you need look out for is a ‘locking pliers metal clamp’. As to be expected, these have a ton of various names such as ‘vice-grips’, ‘mole-grips’, ‘self-grips’ and more, so if you’re looking for them, be sure to try those key words as well to find the one you’re after.

The ‘metal clamp’ portion isn't to signify you’re looking for one made out of metal, but instead it refers to the nose on these pliers which is designed to hold metal sheets for welding.

Granted, these metal sheet holding clamps don’t have the same size jaws as a true platypus clamp, but if you don’t need to hold large poly-boards on set, these far-cheaper alternatives should have you covered.

What are these clamps for?

What can we use these budget platypus clamps for? Really, anything flat that requires being held in place. For example black-flags on set, reflectors, mirrors and even the product itself if you’re shooting still life.

*These wide-mouthed and flat clamps are great for holding black-flags and reflectors as well as many other flat items on set.*

Why not use a regular clamp instead?

The huge benefit of these particular clamps is the locking capability of the jaws themselves, as you can adjust the width at which they clamp down on something and this the reason these pliers are favoured over simply using a regular clamp. Ordinarily a clamp would grip something by applying pressure to the two very small contact points on either side of the object. The locking pliers are designed to spread that pressure over the surface of its jaws which makes them ideal for holding large flat objects without you crushing them in the clamp or them slipping or falling out, which is usually what would happen with regular clamps.

Grip-Heads

The only other thing we need to make these work on set is a ‘grip-head’. These grip-heads are often found on your C-stands and are extremely common and usually plentiful in all studios, but if you need some, you can buy them separately. Personally though, I’d recommend saving a bit more money and getting a full-blown C-stand that usually comes with 2 of these as well as boom included.

To make the clamp work with your grip-head, simply slot the perfectly shaped and sized handle of the clamp in the boom slot of the grip-head. Job done. This actually works surprisingly well as the clamps tightening screw results in a rounded handle on one side and its this somewhat cylindrical handle that fits perfectly and snuggly in the grip-head.

From here you can then attach that grip-head to any light-stand you have, but for best results and the most flexibility in terms of movement, a C-stand and boom is the best option.

*You can use the pliers and grip-head combo on any lightstand, but the C-stand and boom will give the most precise control*

As I started to light bigger sets and light on location, I’ve been using this budget clamp combo for years and as I mentioned at the top, as long as you dont need to hold huge polyboards up high on set, this little DIY clamp will cover most things flat and is likely a must for many still-life shooters that need to clamp backgrounds or reflectors etc.

It’s certainly not a big investment, so it may well be worth grabbing one or more to have around, especially if you already have the c-stands and grip-heads, this is a no-brainer!

*I’ve been using one of these budget mini-platypus clamps for a while and they are always handy to have on set.*

Purchasing options…

Disclaimer: I know people can be sensitive to me recommending things, so before anyone starts grumbling, there are no affiliate links, codes, vouchers or signups. No sponsorships or promotional content, please choose to either purchase this or not of your free will. I promise you, I do not profit in any way from sharing this information with you for free😂

There are of course lots of places you can purchase these from, here are a couple after I did a quick Google. At the very least it’ll give you an idea for what you should be searching for.

eBay: Welding Clamps Locking Grips C Clamps Locking U Clamp Sheet Metal Fasteners

Price: £10.00

Link: Here

Zoro - 255mm/10" Sheet Metal Locking Clamp

Price: £5.99

Link: Here

Amazon: Welding Clamp Flat Blade Type Quick Release Locking Holder Clasp 10" (255mm)

Price: £10.00

Link: Here

P.S. pls try use to anybody but Amazon

Grip Head

If you don’t have a grip-head, you can get them here at Essential Photo which is where I get all my photo-gear in the U.K.

Essential Photo: 2.5” Replacement Stainless Steel Grip Head For C-Stands

Price: £29.99

Link: Here

Thank You

As always, thanks for checking out this article and spending a little bit of your day with me here. I hope you found it useful and if you left with a little more knowledge than when you arrived, it’s been worth it.

If you have any questions or comments, or if something doesn’t make sense, by all means, fire away in the comments below and I’ll do my best to answer what I can. Thanks again and I’ll see you in the next one.

Don’t forget to sign up to my newsletter to be sent all of these photo tips and techniques articles every month in case you miss one.

JHP Livestreams…

If you give this setup a go, I’d love to see how the shots turn out, so feel free to share them my way. One way to do that is via my Livestream. I Livestream every other Tuesday night via my FB Page and there I answer your questions, critique your shots, take community images into Photoshop to work on them and discuss all manner of lighting tips and techniques. I look forward to seeing you and your work there real soon. JHP Facebook Page

Missed the Livestreams? Check the VODS!

This year I’ve also been uploading my Facebook livestreams to my YouTube channel for those that missed them… or never want to touch Facebook again.

Watch my livestream VODs here: Jake Hicks Photography YouTube

ONLINE WORKSHOPS - LEARN MORE

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Sunny 16 Presents: The Lighting Lounge 08 Podcast - Colour with Jake Hicks

I sat down with John-Michael on his Lighting Lounge podcast recently and chatted about everything from my style, how I got started in the industry and some of my thoughts on what can take an image from good to amazing in todays market. And yes, I am aware that he spelt colour wrong on the title!

I spoke about how I first started to play with colour out of a necessity to stay sane in a busy studio and how I was able to utilise that colour knowledge to elevate my lighting knowledge in general. I mention this in the episode, but 15 years ago I thought I was already pretty good at studio lighting, it wasn’t until I started to learn coloured lighting that I realised I was actually pretty bad!

Later in the episode we get a little more technical with the principles of light and how colour affects us in imagery. Plus, John is a huge analogue film fan, so we dig into my love of the analogue film side of photography too as we discuss everything from the terrifying experience of using the ridiculously expensive peel-apart film, through to my slightly lazy approach to using film as a means to a beautiful end. Plus, you get to hear me trying to explain a film camera to an 18 year old! Trust me, it’s harder than you think.

If you’d prefer to listen to just the audio, you can do so here on Podbean too… Sunny 16 presents: The Lighting Lounge 08 Jake Hicks Colour

I hope find some useful tidbit of info to take away from this conversation with John and thank you to him and Sunny 16 for having me on the show.

Combining Flash and Ambient with the new Rotolights

We all know what long-exposure photography is right? I think we all have a rough idea, but long exposure shots can vary from half a second to show light trails from moving cars headlights, all the way to multi-hour exposures of galaxies in the night sky. But regardless of the content, the core premise of long-exposure is the camera's shutter being open for an extended period of time. But it’s this long shutter duration that often puts many photographers off.

As photographers we’re taught to keep that shutter as fast as light will allow to keep our subject sharp, failing to do this will result in a blurred subject, right? Well, not necessarily. We can have our shutter open as long as we like and still get a sharp subject, as long as we use flash to freeze them and this is where the creative possibilities of combining flash and ambient light are seemingly limitless.

*Long-exposure photography can take many forms and even if we limit it to just studio portraits there are seemingly limitless possibilities.*

As you can see from the images above, the technique of long exposure portraits in the studio can produce a multitude of looks, but there are a few rules we have to abide by to make sure that not only the subject is sharp, but also clearly visible and not obscured by the surrounding blurring.

To achieve this we need at least one light to flash, this freezes our subject, and one light to not flash. This light should be on continuously throughout the entirety of our shutter duration as it’s this light that produces the blurring effect.

As I mentioned, long-exposure portraits can take on many forms, but for this example, I want to keep it as simple as possible and provide you with a setup that only requires two lights.

The Setup

As I started writing this, I originally began with a section about why I love the ease of use that the Rotolight LED lights provide for long-exposure portraits. And although I think you may find my experiences of transitioning from regular lights to LED useful, I fully appreciate that many of you are already aware of these benefits, hence why you’re here. If you’re interested in hearing my thoughts then by all means continue reading until the end, but for now, let’s dive straight into the technique.

First off, let’s look at the setup…

What you will need

2 x AEOS 2 Pros*
1x Flash Trigger
1x Backdrop
1x Bounce-board/V-Flat/White Sheet/ Large Softbox

*The AEOS 2 Pros aren’t mandatory for this setup, but the new Pro versions will make triggering the flash a little easier. The older AEOS 2 can easily sync via an Elinchrom trigger (which is what I use on my Pros), but the new Pro versions will trigger via a Godox, Profoto, PixaPro and others.

TL;DR/ADHD/Artist Setup Explanation

Set up backdrop with model close to it.
Place light to camera left, up high and angled down to model - This light is set to flash & Ambient.
Note: Ensure that this light only hits model and not backdrop.
Place second light in front of model and either modify with a large softbox or bounce into a white sheet or V-flat.
Note: This light is set to flash only.

Camera Settings

Camera - Nikon D850
Lens - 105mm f2
Shutter Speed - 0.4 of a Second
Aperture - f2.8
ISO - 100
Kelvin - 4000K~
Focal Length - 105mm

The Results

Click to fit any of the shots below to your screen.

Featured Model: Hayley Mathews

Breaking it down

As I mentioned, this is only two lights, but its effect is certainly very eye-catching and couple that with the colour-shifts that we’re playing with and this can be a very powerful and visually engaging lighting technique indeed.

There are a couple of very important aspects to this setup that I want you to be aware of as failing to apply them will result in more of a visual mess than a stunning portrait.

The Long Exposure Light

In this setup, the ambient light placed off to camera left is the light that cuts across the set and it's this light that is creating the long exposure light-trails effect we see in the final images.

It’s very important that this light does not hit the backdrop and only illuminates the model. To keep the light where you want it, either flag it off like I did or use barn doors to direct the light where you want it.

The reason we only want this light on the model is simple; if that light was hitting the backdrop with the long exposure, the entire shot would be filled with movement. As it is, we only want to strike the model from one side and simply create the long exposure effects from that edge light highlighting the skin. For reference as to where that light should be placed, take a look at the attached image here as it shows what the light is illuminating.

It’s for this reason that most of the model poses will be positioned looking off towards this light. Obviously, if she was to look the other way, the flash wouldn’t hit her and she’d be left in darkness.

Note: This light should be set to ambient as well as flash so it’s this highlight on the skin you see here that will create the long exposure effect.

With the Rotolight lights, we’re able to individually adjust the brightness of both the flash and the ambient light independently, Use this feature to your advantage and play with varying brightnesses of each to find what works for you. More ambient light will produce more light trails which could look cool but it could also dominate the shot.

The Flash Fill

The second light in this setup is set to flash only. Make sure that this light is not producing any ambient light as it’ll overpower and ruin the image if it does.

This second light is a soft light and you can either use a softbox or bounce it into a white V-flat like I did, but even a white sheet will work. The reason this is a soft light is so that we can illuminate the entire scene with this light without it overpowering our long exposure light.

Take a look at the accompanying image here. In this shot, the flash from the model has not fired so you can clearly see what the soft fill light is doing without it. Note that the ambient light from that model light is still present so we still get the long exposure effect in this shot.

This image is a good example of how much that flash from the model light to camera-left is actually doing, as without it, the image is very flat and lifeless.

Are you new to Rotolight Flash?

If you’re new to the Rotolight flash function then there are a couple of things to bear in mind that may help you as the way these lights control flash power is very different to regular strobes.

First, let’s take a look at the new flash menu on the AEOS 2 Pro (this is the same menu as the NEO 3 Pro too)

On the touchscreen we can access everything we need from this one menu - This may seem minor, but I love the fact that we don’t need to go multiple menus deep to access things!

Flash Trigger - From here we can access what flash trigger we’re using to fire the Rotolight Flash

Flash Power - This controls the brightness of the flash

Ambient Brightness - This controls the ambient LED power, or modelling light if you’re coming from the strobe world

Flash Group - We can dedicate certain lights to specific groups and this can make adjusting the lights from the trigger easier if we have a lot of lights we want to change simultaneously

Flash Duration - This is a new feature for myself coming from strobes as with LEDs being an electrically controlled flash, we can dictate exactly how long we want the flash to be on during the exposure

Kelvin Value - Here we can control the Kelvin of the light - Note that this is also where we access all of the RGB colours too

Flash Triggers

If you were curious about what flash triggers are supported, here are the ones available as of the time of writing this. I only say that now as more have been added in firmware updates over time so there may be even more triggers supported when you read this.

Godox, Profoto, Pixapro, Photix, Neewer, Yongyuo and Raven …and no, I haven’t heard of a Raven Trigger either!

Flash Powers

This is one area that is a little different to many strobes, but certainly more common on speedlights. The flash power on the Rotolights is displayed in fractions… mostly.

From lowest to highest power; x16, x8, 1/2, MAX and MAX+. I’m assuming the x16 and x8 are fractions, but for space reasons, they wrote it like this…. and yes I double-checked and no there isn’t a 1/4!

Note: One extra point here is that if you have your ambient power set to 0%, the flash won’t trigger at the x8 and x16 values. I’m sure I was told a reason for this, but it escapes me now. This is never an issue though as we have a lot more flash power control with the flash duration function too.

Flash Duration

I feel like I’ve used a ton of different lights over the years, but this is a new setting for me. Flash duration does exactly what you might imagine and you can indeed easily select how long you want your flash duration to be. How is this useful? Well, it actually gives us a ton of extra control over the flash ‘power’.

The flash duration settings of the Rotolights range from 1/50th of a second all the way up to 1/2500th of a second and this gives us a ton of fine-tuning when it comes to power. How? Because depending on our camera's shutter speed, the duration with which the Rotolight is actually flashing its flash power will affect how bright it appears in our shot.

For example, I shoot most of my images with a camera shutter speed of around 1/125th of a second, which means that any flash durations above that setting (faster than 1/125th) will be caught in my exposure and I can use those settings to adjust the apparent brightness of the light in that exposure.

For example, let’s say I took a shot with my camera set to 1/250th of a second, but I set my Rotolight to have a flash duration of 1/500th. The Rotolight would only be producing light for half of my exposure time compared to if I’d set my light to the same as my shutter speed at 1/250th. This may take a bit of getting used to, but it's actually a very useful way to control power once you start playing with it.

TL;DR Rotolight Flash Settings

Set your Rotolight to the trigger you have. Make sure you have a flash duration that’s faster than your camera’s shutter speed and then set the flash power as required.

To achieve the brightest flash power from your Rotolights: Set your Flash Power to MAX+ and your Flash Duration to 1/50th

To achieve the lowest flash power from your Rotolights: Set your Flash Power to x16 (must have ambient brightness to set to at least 1%) and set your Flash Duration to 1/2500th.

Back to the Lighting Setup…

Adding the Colour

Some of you may have noticed a lot of blue light in these images and wondered where that was coming from. There’s actually nothing too complicated going on here and you don’t need to do this if you don’t want to, but I have my model flash light set to a different Kelvin value than my fill light - Take a look at the lighting diagram again to see which light is set to what Kelvin. In fact, if you just look at the two example images here, you’ll see that the flash one is more orange than the ambient one which is clearly very blue. This Kelvin mixing technique is something that I play with a lot, but again you don’t have to. If you do want to give it a try though, I’d suggest keeping the flash at a similar Kelvin value to your camera and then setting your fill flash to be a lot cooler.

Adding the Movement

Up until now, all I’ve done is explain where everything is placed and what settings to use. If you took a picture at this stage and did nothing else, you may be less than impressed by the results. Why? Well, it's because we’ve yet to add the movement as it's this movement that actually creates the long exposure ‘effect’ we’re trying to achieve.

If you’re still following along, then it’s the flash/ambient light to camera left pointed at the model that will be creating these effects, so how do we make them? At this stage, you could set your camera to 1/125th of a second and take some beautiful portraits, but if we want to add the long exposure effect, we need to increase the exposure time. To begin with, I’d recommend about half a second. You can increase or decrease that time based on preference, but that half a second will give us a very prominent effect for now.

Now that you’ve got a shutter speed of 0.5 seconds, you need to move the camera around once you hit the shutter. This will take some getting used to at first, but you simply compose the shot, press the shutter, the flash will fire, but then you immediately need to start moving the camera.

When that shutter is open for that half second, your camera will see the highlights on the skin created by the ambient light from your model light and it will start to paint light streaks across your frame.

It’s this aspect of the shot that is most creative and you’ll need to experiment with a variety of camera movements to get a look that you like… just don’t ever expect to get the same effect twice.

Points to Remember

Make sure that ambient light only falls on the model - Failing to do this will result in a blurry mess all over where you really only want the light trails from the shine on the skin to be visible.
The light trails will be most visible on highlights - As you can see from the shots I took, the light trails really pop on shiny skin. Consider this when setting up the shot and adding shiny jewellery is also a great way to add extra effect too.
Experiment with camera movements - I’ve been doing this technique for a while so I kinda know what works best, but I recommend you try a bunch of camera movements with shutter open to see what works for you. Consider small movements as well as large movements, zoom in and out, up and down etc.
Don’t stress about the colour shifting to begin with - I’ve shown you how to add a bit of colour via Kelvin shifting in this technique, but if you’re doing this for the first time, I wouldn’t overcomplicate things. To start, I’d recommend you just stick to all the lights and camera being the same Kelvin value and somewhere around 4000K-5000K is a good spot.

Rotolight and Me

Below are some of my thoughts on what these new LED Rotolights are bringing to the table and I know many of you already know this, but if you’re new here then I’ll add my disclaimer that states that I’m currently a Master of Light for Rotolight. That simply means that Rotolight deem me good enough to use their lights to their fullest potential and that I have the ability to share my thoughts on them via socials and in-person training.

Older long exposure shots like this one were obviously possible with tungsten lights, but when you have to layer multiple gels to first colour correct the orange tungsten to flash before you can then gel the light with a different colour, it was a real pain. Not to mention extremely likely that your multiple gels would overheat and melt. LEDs that can flash simply make all this obsolete!

Lighting Revolution

This long exposure technique is far from new and I was doing something similar to this 25 years ago at art college. However, in previous years I would use a studio strobe to flash, but then I’d need an alternative light to produce the ambient light. Historically these were always tungsten lights and they were a real pain to use. In case you aren’t aware, the old tungsten lights produced light by passing a current through one of the strongest metals available to us, tungsten. The current passing through this metal would literally make the metal glow bright orange and this is what created the illumination. This seems simple enough and we used tungsten lights for many, many years, but there were significant downsides to these lights. Firstly, if you’re passing power through metal with enough force to make it glow extremely bright, that metal is going to be extremely hot as a byproduct. This made operating these lights a nightmare for obvious reasons, but the other major issue of super-heated metal is its bright orange glow!

Remember that this orange glow is very different to the cool blue tone of flash, so to make these ambient lights look good in shot alongside flash, you’d often have to neutralise that orange colour like you see me doing in the shots above. This meant placing colour-balancing coloured gels (thin sheets of plastic) in front of the lights. As you may well imagine, these sheets melted extremely quickly and were just a pain to work with for extended periods.

Are you starting to see why long-exposure studio photography isn’t very popular yet?

LED Revolution

Unless you’re relatively new to planet Earth, you’ll likely be aware that LED lighting has been dominating the photography scene for a while now. Sure, flash still has its place, but LEDs bring an awful lot of convenience to the table and especially when it comes to long-exposure photography.

Firstly, LEDs are infinitely cooler to run than tungsten and you can have a decently powered LED on for hours and it still be cool enough to touch. Secondly, seeing as you’re not forcing lightning bolts along thin strips of metal, you’re no longer producing bright orange light as a result. Just these two things alone now make long exposure photography a breeze, but there are yet more benefits to be had with the right lights.

Rotolight and RGB

For the last year or so I’ve been using the new Rotolight LEDs and as someone who uses an awful lot of colour in their photography, these lights are a dream-come-true. Why? Because the Rotolight LEDs can offer me a full 16 million colour RGB spectrum at the twist of a dial! So now I have cool running lights that won’t give me third-degree proxy burns AND they aren’t producing an egressive orange glow that would make a TOWIE girl blush in the process!

Are you starting to see why this will make our long exposure life extremely easy now?

But wait, there’s more…

Ordinarily, most people purchase LED lights to escape the nightmares and difficulty that flash can provide. But if we want to shoot some cool-looking long-exposure portraits, sadly we still have to use flash to freeze the subject. Once again Rotolight has us covered though as not only do their lights provide full RGB spectrum ambient lights, but those same lights can flash in the full RGB spectrum too! To my knowledge, I think this is the only LED light on the market to actually flash in any colour you want.

Now look, I appreciate this sounds like I’m overly gushing over these lights and although I’d ordinarily let our American counterparts do the uncouth work of telling you that these lights are ‘the greatest things ever made and you need to buy them immediately’, let me put my British stoicism on hold for a moment and just add that these lights are quite simply ‘lighting on easy-mode’!

If you’ve ever fused flesh-to-bulb or melted a box of gels on tungsten lights in the past (firstly, welcome to being old like me), then you’ll appreciate just how easy these LED lights make your life today. So yes, I’m very impressed with these lights, but you have to also remember what we had to use in the past. You young-uns don’t know how easy you’ve got it!

Many of you have been following my work on here for over a decade and in that time you’ve seen me working with all manner of lights. When I originally started working with these Rotolights over a year ago, I actually had no intention of completely dropping my old studio strobes….. but truth-be-told, I barely use them anymore.

Products Used…

Although I am sharing my own personal thoughts and findings about the lights mentioned in this article, many of you will want to know that I am now a ‘Master of Light’ for Rotolight. As such, I have been given a discount code to share with you when purchasing any of their products via the Rotolight website. Use my code ‘JAKEHICKS10’ when purchasing and you’ll save a bunch of money. I’ve never earned a penny of commission on this though, so if you find a better deal elsewhere, go for it.

Rotolight AEOS 2 PRO

With the AEOS 2 PRO, the world is your studio. Combining the shoot what you see benefits of powerful continuous light with a High Speed RGBWW strobe, AEOS 2 PRO offers unmatched versatility for photographers and filmmakers. Uniquely lightweight with an ultra-thin design, it’s never been easier to achieve beautiful soft light on the move.

AEOS 2 PRO Website Link

Thank You

Don’t forget to sign up to my newsletter to be sent all of these photo tips and techniques articles every month in case you miss one.

JHP Livestreams…

Missed the Livestreams? Check the VODS!

This year I’ve also been uploading my Facebook livestreams to my YouTube channel for those that missed them… or never want to touch Facebook again.

Watch my livestream VODs here: Jake Hicks Photography YouTube

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Using Rotolight LEDs with Natural Light

In the last year or so I’ve started to work with LED lighting more and more, and for good reason. The LEDs that I use have about 16 million different colours, they have a fully adjustable Kelvin spectrum, they’re incredibly simple to use with their what-you-see-is-what-you-get ambient light and they can even flash as well if I ever need it. I am of course talking about my Rotolight LED lights.

For those that aren’t aware, I’m currently a ‘Master of Light’ for Rotolight. This just means that I’m trusted enough by them to showcase what these awesome new LED lights can do and although I’ll happily sing the praises of these lights, there is always one question that people still ask me, ‘Are they strong enough to overpower the sun?’

I’m guessing this question is just poorly worded, because no, no light can do that, but if you’re wondering whether you can use these Rotolights outside in conjunction with natural light, then yes, yes you can definitely do that.

The Setup

The lighting setup itself is simple, just go outside and set up one light as your key-light on your model and then let the natural light be your fill-light. This is about as easy as it gets so there’s no need to stress about that setup and you can give it a go first before you try adding a little creative and colourful flare to it.

The Job

To add a little visual interest to that basic principle, I wanted to bring in some extra colour to the shot. For those already familiar with my work, you’ll likely know that I’m very guilty of dominating and overpowering the subject with bold and beautiful colours. This time however, I wanted to avoid that so instead I opted for a more natural and subtle colour effect.

The job was to get some clean portraits for a lady who needed some updated shots to use with her new business. Once I got those I got some more editorial-looking shots too, but more on those later.

TL;DR/ADHD/Artist Setup Explanation

Setup arty backdrop outside
Seat model and position large scrim between model and sun
Position key-light close to model with a Kelvin value of 3000K
Expose sunlight to be a stop darker than key-light and camera settings, then set camera to 3000K

Prepping

I opted to have the model sat down outside in natural light where I then added a studio backdrop as well as an additional light. Getting your subject sat down for portraits is a cheat-code for natural-looking shots as it’s far easier for someone to look and feel natural sat down in a specific spot over trying to stand naturally. Plus having them seated makes your life of setting up far easier. You know they won’t be moving about and drifting in and out of the perfect light, so this is a win-win for all involved. Plus, in my opinion, it’s just easier to get better-composed shots of a sat subject with a 3:2 crop over the awkward amount of space with full-body shots. A high stool is perfect for posture and framing and I just bought a cheap one and painted it myself like you see here.

Concerns with Daylight

I’ve been a studio shooter for over 20 years and one of the best things about that studio-life, is the ability to always have complete control of your lighting. Daylight is far from compliant and if you’re lucky enough to get a day where it isn’t raining, you still need to worry about the huge variance in contrast from direct sunlight compared to the soft contrast of clouds passing in front of the sun at any time.

With this in mind, I just always use a scrim outdoors to shield the subject from direct and harsh sunlight. That way the lighting is consistent the whole time and although the exposure may go up and down a little, the contrast on the model is always consistent.

The scrim I use is a purpose-built frame and scrim, but you could use any diffusion material in front of your subject to control the light properly and even a white cotton sheet strung between two light stands will let enough light through to make this work in a pinch. As I said, I use a proper one all the time in the studio and the frame and stand it comes with just makes life a lot easier.

For this shoot, I simply rolled the scrim outside and positioned it between the model and the sun. Job done.

The Key Light

The next most important thing we need to do, is bring in the key-light. As I mentioned, this will be the main light illuminating the subject’s face and top half so I brought it in close and raised it up to allow the light to fall down the body.

As you can see from the BTS and setup shots above, this is pretty simple in practice and if you just wanted to try this setup of adding a key-light to work with natural light, this is a great way to go about it. But what if you wanted to take it further?

Creative Kelvin’s

A technique that I like to play with a lot when looking to generate interesting colours in shot without overpowering the subject, is Kelvin adjustments. If you’re unfamiliar with what this is, Kelvin is just the colour range often associated with white balance. For many, switching the camera to AWB (auto white balance) is enough to get the camera to take some ‘correct’ looking images, but what is white balance and how can we leverage Kelvin to make more interesting photos?

Sidebar: I often get asked about my workflow. I’m known for having a very bright and colourful photographic style, so the question often comes up, ‘What’s your workflow to ensure you always achieve accurate colours?’ From here the line of questioning usually follows up with, ‘Do you use a grey card on every shoot?’, and ‘What colour-checker do you use?’ or ‘How often do you calibrate your monitor?’. I’m not undermining the importance of these aspects in your photography if they work for you, but I never do any of those things.

For me and my work, I’m interested in creative colour, not accurate colour. I want my images to say something, not just photocopy them. Yes, you can check the Kelvin value of the sun on any given day to ensure that your key-light is exactly the same colour and then you can set your camera to the same Kelvin as both of them, but again, I’m not interested in a photocopy of the scene. Personally, I’d like to add a little visual interest to the shot and one of the easiest ways to do that, is to tweak the Kelvin values involved.

If you’re not familiar with what the Kelvin scale looks like, here’s an example below of how it relates to photography.

You can see from the images above, that daylight is around 5000K to 6000K. Flash is a similar value, but incandescent lights like the old tungsten bulbs are far warmer at around 3000K.

We can balance out these fluctuations in colour with our camera, but instead, I’ll be using the variances for creative effect.

Breaking it Down

As I mentioned, daylight is around 5000K, so if I was to take a ‘correct’ image of something lit with daylight, I’d set my camera to a similar 5000K. If I was to set my camera to 10,000K however, the same shot would look very orange. Alternatively, if I was to set my camera to 3000K, the same image would look very blue. See below.

With this knowledge then, how can we manipulate that for creative effect?

Rotolights Kelvin Control

One feature of the Rotolights that I love, is their complete and fully adjustable Kelvin range. As you may well imagine, this Kelvin range is easily adjustable via the lights’ touchscreens.

It’s with this knowledge and the adjustable Kelvin range of the Rotolights that I was able to create these shots.

Final Images

Click on any of the images below to re-fit them to your screen.

Camera Settings

Camera - Nikon D850
Lens - 24-70mm f2.8
Shutter Speed - 1/400th
Aperture - f2.8
ISO - 30
Kelvin - 3000K
Focal Length - 70mm

Exposure Settings

I’ve explained the settings and I’ve explained where everything is positioned and the Kelvin’s they need to be, but what what do we need to bear in mind whilst shooting. One big tip here is to underexpose the daylight by about 1 stop. We should probably aim to do this first as this is the one light we cannot control and my golden rule for any shoot is to always adjust your settings around that one light you cannot control. To do this I took a few shots and adjusted my camera by eye and you can see that the sun was pretty bright as I was shooting at 1/400th of a second at ISO 30. Again, remember that I want the sun (fill-light) to be a little darker than my key-light. Many of you may not have ISO 30 on your camera (it may read ‘Lo 1.0’), so alternatively you can increase your shutter speed instead. For example, ISO 30 is roughly 2 stops darker than ISO 100, so if your camera only goes to ISO 100, you’d need to increase shutter speed 2 stops to 1/1600th.

The reason we’re going through all this trouble is to maintain the aperture value of f2.8. If you’re happy to shoot at higher apertures to limit the light, then you needn’t worry about the ISO values as much.

So now with our camera set to the correct values for a darker fill-light in the form of the sun, we can now bring in our key-light and expose that ‘correctly’ for the subjects face.

This all sounds far more complicated than it actually is, essentially just underexposure your daylight however you see fit and then correctly expose your key-light.

Thankfully, one huge benefit of the scrim in my experience, is how much that permanently soft-light on the subject doesn’t fluctuate too much from clouds drifting in front of the sun. You’ll still need to watch if it gets too dark, but for the most part, the exposure on the subject will stay the same. In fact, in some of the shots I shared here, you can see the sun casting harsh shadows on the background occasionally, but the subject remains fairly unaffected thanks to that diffusion.

To Sum Up

As I mentioned, this is a simple one-light setup, the only tricky part is playing with the Kelvin adjustments, but to be fair, you certainly don’t need to know the technical nonsense behind what’s happening to get some cool-looking shots. Simply go outside, set up a key light in from of your model and set that light to 3000K. Then just set your camera to the same Kelvin value and shoot away.

You’ll notice that any shadows cast by your key-light, should now appear blue-ish as they are filled in by the now blue-ish daylight. If you missed it, look again at what I mean in the image here.

In terms of post-pro, I actually brought the final images back to be a little warmer than 3000K and these final shots that you’re seeing here are closer to around 4500K.

One reason for this adjustment was simply that it was very bright on the day and I struggled to get an accurate read on the back of the camera colour-wise, but the other reason is simply personal preference. At 4500K this gave a nicer skin tone for what I was after, but again, this is purely personal preference and you may prefer a cooler final look or maybe even a warmer one. Don’t be afraid to experiment with it.

Closing Comments

Lastly, and I know I’m going to get this question so I thought I’d answer it here in preparation for it, but no, you don’t need the big Titan X1 Rotolights to make this work and yes, this is just as possible to achieve with the AEOS lights as well.

I love the Titan X1 lights and they look cool as hell on set for clients and BTS etc. but they are not mandatory for many of the shoots I do and for the most part, the AEOS lights can do what the Titans do, albeit at a fraction of the cost.

I think one misconception about the Titans is how bright they are. They are phenomenal lights and have tons of useful features, but they’re only marginally brighter than the AEOS lights and to prove that, I did this quick test to show you.

The above shot shows the AEOS 2s and AEOS 2 Pros alongside the Titan X1. All of these shots were taken with the exact same camera settings and you can see that the Titans are maybe about 1/2 a stop brighter. So yes, in short, if you own one of the AEOS lights, you can absolutely achieve this same setup and use your lights in conjunction with daylight just like I did.

Bonus Shots…

Obviously styling is always key with any portrait and although I think its easier to showcase the Kelvin colours on white and pale colours that have a texture like cotton, you can still achieve the same thing with darker, shiny styling too.

Just look at those gorgeous steel-blue highlights on that black trench!!!

Featured Model: Hayley Mathews

Products Used…

Although I am sharing my own personal thoughts and findings about the lights mentioned in this article, many of you will want to know that I am now an ‘‘Master of Light’ for Rotolight. As such, I have been given a discount code to share with you when purchasing any of their products via the Rotolight website. Use my code ‘JAKEHICKS10’ when purchasing and you’ll save a bunch of money and I will enjoy a beer in your honour for doing so.

Rotolight Titan X1

Arguably one of Rotolight’s flagship products, this light does everything you could possibly imagine, including tint control and their very cool electronically controlled diffusion, SmartSoft. This is an awful lot of light and is often found on TV and film sets.

Titan X1 Website Link

Rotolight AEOS 2 PRO

AEOS 2 PRO Website Link

Large Scrim

I originally got this for cinematic studio lighting, but now I nearly use it on every shoot that requires a soft light. This scrim produces noticeably cleaner and softer light over simply using a softbox alone.

Large Scrim Link

Thank You

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Lighting Setup: Gelled Portrait - Colour Graded In-Camera

Gelled lighting can be tricky. It either totally dominates a shot or the colours get washed out and lose impact. In this deceptively simple lighting setup, I show you how to add an in-camera colour wash or global colour grade to your shots that adds a colour harmony to a portrait without overpowering it.

The Lighting Setup

Let’s dive straight into this one as it’s tricky to explain what’s going on without actually showing you. So first off, let’s look at the lighting diagram.

TL;DR/ADHD/Artist Setup Explanation

Set up white backdrop behind model
Place medium stripbox horizontally on floor in front of white backdrop
Place large white umbrella behind you and attach blue gel
Place two medium stripboxes vertically either side of you and bring them in close

What you will need

4 Lights - Okay, so we’re not off to a great start as I appreciate not everybody has 4 lights hanging around. I often share 2 light setups with this in mind, but every once in a while, I’ll share something a little more involved like this for those that have a couple of extra lights on hand. I also want to take a moment to glance into the future and say that I guarantee the number one question I’ll receive about this setup is, “Can I achieve the same look with only 2 lights?”

To you, I will say, “kinda, but not really”.

But if you still want to play with the basic concept and only have 2 lights, here’s a setup to get you as close as possible.

White Backdrop - Pretty self-explanatory, but I will say that this doesn’t need to be very big. In fact I’m just using a simple white window blind behind the model here. You could of course just use a white wall, but a cheap window blind is very quick and easy substitute here too.

*A white window-blind can be a great substitute background. Plus they’re pretty cheap and easy to roll up and store.*

Large White Umbrella - I use a large super-soft white umbrella in a lot of my setups, so if you don’t already have one, I’d recommend getting one. For this type of shot, I want a very soft wash of colour across the entire scene, so I opt for a white umbrella over a silver one as that can throw unwanted shadows. The larger the better, but anything around 130cm to 160cm in diameter will be ideal.

Bonus Tip: Many very large umbrellas like this can be heavy. In my experience, I tend to have them attached to their own individual light stand over trying to attach them to the light stand holding the light. This just eases the burden on that one stand and allows you to move the umbrella further from the light to get more spread if needed.

*A large white umbrella should be in everybody's kit and one around 130cm to 160cm will be ideal.*

Strip Softboxes - These modifiers are pretty common and not too pricey so many of you likely already have some. As you can see from the diagram above, I’m using small/medium ones here and that’s to have more control over the light when I bring them in super-close to the subject . If I used bigger ones, the light would spread everywhere and I’d likely wash out too much colour from the background.

*Strip boxes are pretty common in many photographers’ kits, just be sure not to use a stripbox that is too large for this setup.*

Camera Settings

Camera - Nikon D850
Lens - 24-70mm f2.8
Shutter Speed - 1/125th Second
Aperture - f2.8
ISO - 100
Kelvin - 5000K~
Focal Length - 50mm~

The Results

Click to fit any of the shots below to your screen.

Breaking it Down

The key to this setup is the light drop-off and how we can use that to our advantage, especially in small spaces like home studios or on location.

The Colour Wash

This wash of colour covers the entire scene and from here we can then pick out elements like the model with white light afterwards. To achieve this, we must first set up the large white umbrella behind us and I also attached a blue gel to it.

Back Strip

Next, we want to add a little interest to the pure blue background and we can do that by adding a strip of white light behind the model via a small stripbox.

Model Lights

Lastly, we need to light the actual model and to do that, I’ll be using another two small gridded stripboxes. The trick to make this work, is to bring those stripboxes in very close to the model. And I’ll just reiterate, CLOSE, closer than think.

Camera Position

This will feel odd at first, but you and the camera needs to be crammed between those two stripboxes and you need to get them as close to being in shot as you can manage. The reason for this is to make those two lights look and feel like one light on the model. What we don’t want, is those two lights casting separate shadows on our subject as that will look terrible very quickly.

We also want to bring them in very close to the model so that when we turn the power of those lights all the way down, the power of the lights doesn't affect the blue gel on the background. I actually found it easier to turn off the other lights so I could see exactly what those strips were doing by themselves. You can see in the image above that I did this just to check and you can also see that hardly any light is hitting that white background behind. This is what you’re looking for.

Points to Consider

I’ve broken it down and shown you what each of these lights is doing, but here are some final thoughts to consider before setting up.

*With the lights so close to the model, we create a beautiful drop-off of light.*

Keep them close - This will probably catch many of you out at first, so I just want to reiterate once again. ‘bring those stripboxes in close to the model!’ Failing to do this will result in the room filling with white light and ruining that blue background.
Light drop-off - One beautiful side effect of bringing those stripboxes in super-close to the model, is the lighting we get on the face. The light power is very low and the lights are very close, this results in a very quick drop-off of light and you can see that in the ‘model lights’ image I posted above. Look at it again and see how quickly the light fades from light to shadow the further back the light travels. As I mentioned, this technique creates some beautiful-looking light on the model, regardless of whether you want to add a coloured gel to that or not afterwards.
Fighting with distortion - One thing you’ll quickly notice when getting into position for this one, is the lack of space to work with. If you’ve set this all up correctly, you should have minimal space for you to shoot from. Those two stripboxes are not only close to the model, but they’re also very close together leaving you limited room to get the shot. I mentioned this above, but these images are shot at around 50mm and if we’re not careful this wider angle lens can distort the model. Just be mindful of this and try not to be tempted into shooting any wider than 50mm. I’m not saying you can’t make it work, but when we are this close to the subject, going too wide can be very unflattering. Just be aware of it.

Closing Comments

This is a simple setup…. in appearance at least. The resulting images are very clean looking and offer the subject room to pose in a variety of ways without casting any odd shadows anywhere. The other big benefit of this setup is that although you’re using 4 lights, this setup requires very little space to implement. In fact, if you already had a small room with a white wall, this wouldn’t require much space at all as the lights have to be very close to one another anyway.

In-Camera Colour Grade

Lastly, you know I always love to add a coloured gel into my shots somewhere, but that coloured gel can be tricky to work with at first if you're not used to it. The reason for this is because it's throwing a ton of coloured light everywhere around the room and this is what's creating this in-camera colour grade I mentioned at the start. This can be tricky to manage at first, so if you’re struggling to make the shot work with the gel, feel free to shoot without any gel at all. You’ll still get the light-strip gradient on the background and you’ll still get some beautiful-looking light on the subject too. Plus, you can always come back and add a gel afterwards if you’re feeling like you’ve got it all set up correctly.

Good Luck and let me know if you have any questions in the comments below.

Featured model: Alba Sanchez

Products Used…

Please note that I’ve included affiliate links below for PixaPro and I will benefit (albeit minimally) from the sales of any of these products should you purchase them. To that end, please feel free to use my discount code ‘HICK5-OFF’ at Essential Photo to receive a discount on any purchase via their site.

160cm White Umbrella

I would argue that large umbrellas like this is mandatory in any kit as it has a huge variety of uses. From large, soft key-light, to a way to fill an entire room with light very easily. Plus, you know I love umbrellas for their ease of using gels with them too.

Link - 160cm White Umbrella

Small/Medium Stripbox

These modifiers seem to be a staple of many studio shooters kit and although they are primarily used for edge lighting, using them as key lights are a great way to get an interesting look.

Link - Small/Medium Stripbox

CITI600 PRO

This is your bread-and-butter strobe! This has more than enough power for 99% of what most of us do day-to-day. Its battery lasts all day and you have no cables to worry about, plus it has TTL if you need it too.

Link - Godox CITI600 PRO