If your like most of us light painting photographers you’ve probably got a bunch of gels laying all over the place, when you go out to shoot you fumble around in the dark trying to find the green only to flash a shot of blue into your image, well this is another super simple light painting photography tip/tutorial that will solve your problems. I didn’t come up with this gel holder I totally stole the idea from seeing pictures of other peoples light painting photography tool kits I think it was either TCB’s or Trevor’s. Anyway thought I would share the tip I robbed, enjoy… Presented by Jason D. Page.
What you will need:
Cardboard (2 pieces of similar size): I used the backs of spiral notebooks but anything will work the key is that you want it thick enough to not allow light to pass thru it but thin enough to make it easy to cut.
Gels
Sissors
Marker
Razor Knife
Tear off the backs of the notebooks so you just have the cardboard.
Decide how many colors you want to include, guestimate how much room you will need, then lay down your flash near the top centered on the cardboard and trace it out.
Cut out the rectangles that you made by tracing the flash.
Get the other piece of cardboard and place the cut and uncut pieces together.
Line them up and trace the previous cuts onto the uncut sheet of cardboard.
Cut the rectangles out again on the new piece.
Make sure the cut outs line up on both pieces of cardboard.
Cut your gels so that they are a little bigger than the cut outs in the cardboard.
Tape the gels into place.
Cut your finger on the metal tape that you decided to use because you were too lazy to go find the right tape.
Sandwich your gels between the two pieces of cardboard and tape it all together.
The finished product. Remember, as with most light painting photography tools, the worse is it looks the better it will work.
I also like to write the colors on the gel holder because I still will forget what color is where.
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