Dan Howell

Soft Color Background

November 14th, 2022

86mm · f/5.6 · 1/200s · ISO 100

Another assignment shot from fashion catalog shoot with agency model. Client wanted to shoot colorful late-Spring/early-Summer fashion on a fall shoot date in the studio. We chose to create a soft multi-color background using several different colored gels onto light grey seamless paper. It took some experimenting to get each filter pack right. This one was a combination of peach and pink tones created by two different heads shooting through a combination of gels on each side and also using a wire-mesh cucoloris. We also created sets with yellow tones and one with blue tones to fill out the shots for the Spring-Summer collection of casual fashion.

When you hit the color mix right, the concept can be an effective and economical set for studio fashion. It takes advance planning or a library of gel colors (lucky to have both) to create a nice interplay between the clothes and the set. I kept the light clean on the model by blocking off the heads creating the color with V-flats. Model is lit with large soft box to one side which is blocked off from background to prevent washing out the color effect.

Fashion

catalog

studio

model

3 Comments

Matheus Castro de Brito November 19, 2022 - 10:31 am

sorry for the question, what is the name of the clothing brand? I need to see more pictures as good as this one.
what did you use to soften the backlight besides the gels? and how many were?

Dan Howell November 19, 2022 - 11:13 am

Matheus Castro de Brito

-the dress is actually a handmade sample for a sewing pattern brand. you can't buy the actual garment. you buy the sewing pattern and sew it yourself.
-the catalog will be out in January and I can post more then
-there isn't actually any thing to soften the background light. There were two Profoto strobe heads with standard reflectors. One on each side. There are two different color gels on each side. On one side the pink with a little purple gels are covering a wire mesh cucoloris creating the variation of color. The other side is strictly pink and orange. I think I cut one color into strips to break up the tone.

Dan Howell November 21, 2022 - 6:29 am

also a note, you can put gel color in something like a soft box, but I have found that the effect is muted, possibly because stray 'white' light is escaping around the gel. On this project I wanted anything but even distribution of color. Using standard reflectors and even grid spots allow for hot spots and gradations create the color spectrums.