Photoshop? Not With These Indoor Senior Pictures!
We're kicking off our Class of 2021 senior pictures season with a few colorful photoshoots with our Senior Squad! And we're loving the way they turned out!
You might not believe this at first--and that's okay, not many people do--but contrary to what you might think, these senior pictures aren't photoshopped!
Outside of the usual clearing of blemishes, everything you see was photographed in camera. We didn't add these color effects in photoshop... we photographed them that way!
How do you make senior pictures look that way?
Well let's start with the first photoshoot...
Photoshoot #1
The Set Up
One flash in front of the model with a cyan gel and two flashes behind the model with magenta gels.
This one is pretty straight-forward. With the lack of white light, the only colors being reflected are the cyan and magenta. The cyan light illuminates the face while the magenta lights highlight the hair, creating the two-tone effect. And because we have no other lights on in the studio and no flash on the backdrop, the background stays solid black, really making the model pop!
Photoshoot #2
The Set Up
With this is the only one where we actually used a flash with white light. We had on flash without a gel in front of our model, two flashes behind the model with orange gels, and one flash with a magenta gel directed at the background.
 |  |
What's Happening
The white light is illuminating the model as usual while the two orange flashes highlight their hair from behind. Then the magenta light is reflected off of the black background creating that pink glow. It's sounds pretty simple, but it creates a really cool 80's effect!
Photoshoot #3
The Set Up
This is our most complex set up... We used 3 flashes set up at the same distance and height from the model, but a couple feet apart from each other. One flash has a red gel (a thin, colored plastic sheet), the second flash had a blue gel, and the third has a green gel. The model then stands on a full-length white background.
What's Happening
So this is where things get a little scientific...
White light, as we see it, is actually made by the combination of red, blue, and green light--thus the 3 colors of gels on the flashes. When the lights flash, each color mixes to create white light, illuminating the model. But, because the flashes are set up slightly apart from each other, the shadows they create are off-set. The different colors in the shadows are created by the model blocking each light at a different angle and the lights mixing in different places.
 |  |
 |
