The advantage to using modeling lights as opposed to strobes is that you see exactly what you are going to get, there is not guess work. Using gels on your lights can be a ver effective way to add interest to an image.
Using Modeling Lights
Most modern strobe lights will come with modeling lights. These are basically just lightbulbs made to mimic the light of a strobe. Although we focus on using the modeling Lights that are a part of strobes in this video, you can use traditional lights as well.
For this shoot, I wanted to shoot at f/1.4 and I didn’t mind using a slower shutter speed like 1/20 sec. This combination will result in a very shallow depth of field as well as Motion Blur. Keep that in mind as you shoot, and make sure that is acceptable, in this case that is what we desired.
Lighting Diagram
Using modeling lights means that you can make big changes to your lighting setup quickly and see exactly what you are going to get. This is the lighting setup we used for these shots. In some images different Lights were turned on and off to create changes in the lighting.