The Flash Book

Spotlight Gradient Background Effect

This is a lot easier than it looks. It’s just one single flash behind your subject, but really close to the background, and then you just slap a gel over the end of the flash (in this case, I put a blue gel over it). Okay, so how do you create that gradient, going from white in the center and graduating out toward blue, while picking up some pink in-between? Just turn up the power of your flash until it’s so bright that it turns the center of the flash white, and believe it or not, the rest takes care of itself. You can try using either a diffusion cap (and stuffing the gel inside the cap) or a grid, if you ...