Member Exclusive – Kinzie Look 1

August 5, 2026
12:03 pm
100

In this first video with Kinzie, you’ll join me from the very beginning of the shoot—including an experiment that didn’t work out in the end.

I begin by exploring how changing white balance can dramatically change the appearance of the sky when combined with colored flash gels. First, I place a CTB (Color Temperature Blue) gel over my flash and set the camera’s white balance to approximately 8000 K. Because the camera is correcting for very warm light that isn’t actually present, the blue flash appears neutral while the ambient daylight shifts toward warm orange tones.

Next, I reverse the process by placing a CTO (Color Temperature Orange) gel over the flash and lowering the camera’s white balance to approximately 3200 K. Now the camera is correcting for very cool light, so the gelled flash again appears neutral while the daylight background shifts toward deep blue.

After comparing both approaches on location, I didn’t like where things were going, so I decided to abandon the gel experiment in favor of a single 70 cm Elinchrom Octabox, which became the lighting setup for the remainder of the session.

From there, I walk you through my complete outdoor portrait workflow.

My exposure method is always built around three simple steps:

Choose the aperture for the depth of field you want.

Adjust the shutter speed (and ISO, if necessary) until the ambient background looks exactly the way you want it.

Adjust the flash power until your subject is illuminated naturally against that background.

For this session, I photographed almost entirely between f/2 and f/2.8, ISO 100, and 1/6,500–1/8,000 second, using High-Speed Sync to preserve detail in the bright afternoon sky while keeping the flash looking natural.

Throughout the lesson, you’ll see the complete, unedited shoot as I choose locations, direct Kinzie, refine compositions, solve problems, and explain every decision along the way. Rather than only showing the successful images, you’ll see the entire creative process—from initial experimentation to the final photographs.