I wanted to create a “golden hour” styled / vibed look in studio. As I’m mentioned before my studio does not have windows so unless I’m outside or on location I have to use studio light for my shoots. I wanted to create an effect using the following image of Ajla Etemovic by Federico Cola as inspiration
Inspiration photo by Federico Cola
To do this effect I used an Paul Buff Einstein studio strobe with an 8” reflector. I taped a CTO & a yellow gel in front of the reflector. At first I used this as the only light. I photographed my model, Camryn against a white wall in my studio. As always I metered the light to get f/9, 1/160, ISO 160.
The single light didn’t really work as desired. Here was the first try using the single gelled strobe
Unedited image
Unfortunately the single light didn’t create the shadows I wanted and was a bit too bold / flat. Also, the image was too yellow. I changed the exposure but didn’t get the look I wanted.
To get a desired look I added a second light. I used a Profoto B2 OCF strobe as my second light. The Profoto was unmodified. I placed the gelled Einstein camera right about 8’ away from Camryn and the Profoto approximately 8’ away from my model camera left about 7’ high. The Profoto was aimed at my model’s face. Again, everything was metered at f/9
I’m happy with the results, but will tweak it a bit when I get the chance on another test. As you can tell by the photos the images have more depth and with some work can get close to the inspiration photo. Also, the shadows created by the Profoto are yellow because of the location of the gelled light. The shadows behind Camryn camera left are reddish-black because my model’s body blocked both lights. On a second test I’ll move my model to minimize the yellow shadows & increase the darker shadows.
The test is a good foundation that I can work from. On a follow-on test I’ll add additional flags to get more dramatic shadows. I’ll also try the effect with only the CTO gel and only the yellow gel and tweak the post processing.
The images
