Recently I did a portrait of a doctor in Denton TX and when we arrived to the location I noticed the glass in the hallway (where we wanted to shoot), was tinted slightly blue.
I realized that the color temperature of my strobe was around 5200K (all lighting manufacturers aim for 5200K daylight balance). I needed to be closer to somewhere around 3200K – 3300K.
So, what I decided to do was gel the strobes to match the the light coming in the window. I used an 1/8 CTB on the main light as well as the kicker light. Once I had the colors balanced between my main light and the ambient light, I realized that the main light was being effected by the ambient light. The next thing I needed to do was to put up a 6×6 scrim to knock down the amount of ambient light coming in (we just taped it to the glass). To have more control over all the ambient light coming in, we added a black 6×6 over about 1/2 of the other scrim we had already taped up. Now, the key light for this portrait was looking much more like I wanted it to look.
Finally,we ended up having to use a gobo to flag off some unwanted light that was spilling in on the doctor. NOTE: the 3rd light we used was just to add more light towards the end of the hallway. Since the lighting towards the information desk was warmer, we didn’t use a gel. Instead, we just used a reflector, pointed the light towards the ceiling and let it add a little more natural looking lighting. I also used a reflector (next to the doctor) to bounce light back around him.
By the way, I like to shoot directly to iPad for on-site proofing.
I use CamRanger and also use Shutter Snitch coupled with the Eye-Fi card. That enabled the doctor to choose his preferred images.
From the entire shoot, THIS was his ‘favorite’ shot. Photo was taken with my D800 and a 135mm lens. [ISO 500 | f5.6 | 1/250].
And THIS is how I balanced blue lights.
cool nicely done. You take all that stuff everywhere? hehe