46 Colored flash

Brighten your world

Kevin Meredith

The Idea

Sometimes the world can appear a little dull, but you can brighten up images with a colored flash. This technique is not just restricted to the nighttime-no matter what time of day it is, just pop a colored flash onto your camera and discover what can be done.

The Ingredients

• ▶ Any camera
• ▶ Colored plastic gels OR
• ▶ Colorsplash Flash

The Process

All you need do to start painting the world with super flash color is get some colored plastic gels, Place one over the flash so that, when it is triggered, it sends out a burst of colored light instead of plain white light, Colored gels are usually sold in square-foot sheets, but you won't need that much, I get my gels from a sample book as the sample-book size is just big enough to cover most flashes. You can usually get these free from shops that sell lighting equipment for theaters and clubs. Some shops have got wise to the fact that people are using them in this way and have started to charge, but even so, they aren't expensive.

Remember that your flash only has a certain range; if you have a colored gel on your flash, it has a stronger effect on objects closer to the flash than those farther away. The power of the light from a flash decreases with distance-this is referred to as fall-off.

You can get some quite bizarre effects if you use a colored flash during the day, as can be seen in Self-Portrait, on page 252, The sunlight was hitting the right side of my face while the left side was in shadow. Because I used colored flash, the shadows are filled in with red.

Once you get the hang of using a colored flash, kick it up a notch and start using two or more. In the photo of Lee (central image in montage, right), one side is colored pink and the other green. I was only able to achieve this with Lee setting off the flashes himself, holding them in his outstretched arms, and it was only possible to set off the flashes manually because of the slow shutter speed on the camera. If you want to use a flash in brighter conditions, for which you won't be able to use such a slow shutter speed, you need to get some wireless flash triggers.

You can spend a lot of money on wireless flash triggers, but you don't need to-there are good-quality sets available at a reasonable price. They consist of a transmitter that slides into the hot shoe of a camera and, usually, two receivers that can be paired with two flashes.

If you don't want to fiddle around with colored gels, an easy solution is to get a dedicated flash for the job. Lomography make the Colorsplash Flash, which has four colored gels built in, If you want to change the color, all you have to do is roll the dial. You also get nine additional gels with the Colorsplash Flash, and these can be swapped with the built-in ones. Lomography also make a Colorsplash camera, which combines a Colorsplash Flash with a 3Smm film camera.

Night Color You can see how the range on a flash works in this picture; the ground is lit up pink. but at about 3m [c. 10ft] the color drops off and the effect of the flash can no longer be seen.

Self-Portrait This shot works because the sunlight was much stronger than the light coming from my flash, so the flashlight had no effect on the parts of my face that were lit by the sun

Montage Using a colored flash under artificial light can give you some wonderful results. Artificial light will sometimes give you a color cast-images can come out blue, yellow, or green, If you use colored flash in these conditions, you can get great contrasts.