Color Gels Can Add Impact to Your Landscape Photography

Using color gels on a flash can add interest and impact to any scene, like what I did in a recent snow storm. It's easy to play with color on such a white canvas as snow. I found the woods near the Horicon Marsh interesting, every branch covered with snow, a forest made out of snow. A tripod would've enabled me to shoot a higher aperture, but I didn't have one. So I used a sharpening trick in CS6 to get reasonable detail. The obvious element of interest is the blue light. It's a Honl blue color gel on an off-camera flash triggered by a PocketWizard. Online stores like Adorama and Amazon offer a variety of color gels from different brands at affordable prices. I did enhance tones and sharpness in CS6 and color, vignetting and contrast in Nik.

Color Gels Technique To capture the color of the gel, use a rubber band to fasten the gel over the flash head. Set your camera to daylight white balance (the sun symbol). You can use the flash on camera, but the light is more natural and pleasing if you use it off camera. You'd need a radio system like Phottix Odin II to fire the flash remotely, or use your camera's built-in infrared system if it has one. Unfortunately these snow forests last only about a day, as the wind and sun diminish the effect. To get the snow in its freshest, fluffiest form, you have to shoot during or immediately after the storm. I like the way the eye goes to the dark trunk and then follows the blue to the right third, where it then follows a bright opening up into the deeper woods, and there's a nice suggestion of depth with the farther trunk lines in the background contrasting with the plainer white foreground. See the opposite of this effect where I preserve the plain white canvas of the snow.