Create Afternoon Sunlight with Erik Valind and Rogue Flash Gels

Create Afternoon Sunlight with Erik Valind and Rogue Flash Gels

We’ve all seen those inviting sunset portraits where lens flare is shining perfectly over the shoulder of the subject exuding warmth and beauty. If only you could capture that magic in a bottle… well in this quick video I’ll show you how to create this effect, in-camera, no matter what the conditions are outside.

To naturally achieve this lens flare photo you need to wait until sunset and hope that the sun passes unobstructed behind your subject. Unfortunately we don't always have the perfect sunset. When working on cloudy days or earlier in the afternoon the sky actually looks quite blue or gray rather than warm orange and red. So for step one we need to take the camera off of Auto White Balance and set it to a white balance of "Shade" which will take the world and instantly warm it up as seen in these first two photos.



Now that the world has gone from neutral gray to warm, we need to warm up our fake sun to match. If the flash were added to the photo now its light would appear blue, so we need to warm it up by adding two Rogue Full CTO Gels. The first one neutralizes the flash color temperature and the second one really amps up the saturated warm light output.

The final step is the positioning of the light. Lens flare is the result of direct light skimming off the from elements of your camera lens. So use a light stand or an assistant to position the flash behind your subject aiming back at the camera. Get focus on your subject then shift your composition slighting to hide the flash just outside of the edge of the frame. Voilà!! It now looks like you have a beautiful warm sunset in the background. Make sure to experiment with the placement of the flash to produce more or less sun flare in the final image.

Final Images:

Camera Settings: 70-200mm Lens @ ~100mm, ISO 100, 1/160, f/3.5

 

Find Erik Valind online here:

 


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3 comments
  • A great post. I think its a great quick way to get that nice orangy flare but for me just using a natural sun flare with a bit of post warming and radial brush work with LR, seems to be a bit more controlling still. I find the gel hard to get just the right orange and then you go into post tweaking the warmth anyways…I guess I could try a custom WB , so I may experiment with this approach a bit more cause I do agree it saves alot of time when its just right…The nice thing with the Radial brush in LR, I can blow out, reduce clarity, and adjust temp all with one brush. Its probably the fastest way to get that sun flare without going into PS. So I I will try and to do either approach to get my final results. Great post and glad to see others are doing this too.

    Rick on
  • Hi Shaikh,

    Thank you for asking. You can order our products from Super Enterprises (superenterprises.com.pk) in Eastern Pakistan (Punjab). Please let us know if you have any other questions.

    Regards,

    Kevin
    The ExpoImaging Team

    Kevin on
  • Where i can buy the flash bender 2 in PAKISTAN?

    Shaikh Mohsin Jawaid on

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