Cinematic Lighting | Raleigh North Carolina Photographer

It seems like every year during the holiday season I tend to cool down creatively. Perhaps it’s the fact during this time things are slow or because it’s winter and I don’t enjoy the cold weather. Whatever the reason here I am struggling creatively every year at the same time.

So it’s Thanksgiving here in the US this week and traditionally we tend to host family and friends during this season. During this time I tend to use it as an opportunity to test out new lighting setups just to see if I can pull it off and my family members tend to be a sport about helping me out while I test these lighting setups.

This year my primary subject was Duane Herbert also known as DJKOLDFUZION who has DJ’ed all across the world. One of the most exciting places he has DJ was in South Korean which I have personally never been. Duane was looking for some images to update his portfolio going into the new year to assist him with promoting his DJ brand and I was looking to test my lighting so it was a perfect opportunity and a win/win situation for both of us.

So let’s talk about the lighting setup. Going into this shoot I knew I wanted colored gels because I love color. I think my love of color with lights comes from the fact that when I watch movies I tend to enjoy the cinematic lighting displayed in movies and the rich color they tend to display. Once I knew that color was a must the next thing I needed to address was to ensure the colors were complementary so I landed on blue and yellow.

Lights, so I opted to go with a 3 light setup. Typically I don’t know how many lights I want in a photoshoot until I start then I figure out what lights I need and go from there. However, for this shoot I knew exactly how many lights I needed. For the main light I used a Godox AD600 with the reflector and a grid. The grid helped to narrow the bean of light so that it only focused on Duane’s face. I then had two Godox AD200 lights in the background with no modifiers, both lights were gelled one had a yellow gel and the other a blue.

Pulling off this type of lighting involved some trial and error but ultimately once I dialed in the power to where it should be I then added fog which helped to carry and pull out the colors even more. I would say without the fog the lights wouldn’t have been the same and I wouldn’t have achieved the cinematic lighting..

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