Without question, color is a crucially important component when you're creating visual material, whether it's a fashion photoshoot, a narrative film, a TikTok video, an Instagram Reel, a website landing page, and so on. Because color plays such a major role in the feeling and mood you're trying to evoke and the story you're trying to tell, it will help you enormously to have a stronger understanding of color theory, and to be much more intentional about the colors you choose for your shoots.

You can certainly learn a lot by doing research online, but there's something to be said about the value of in-person, hands-on educational workshops that are lead by talented instructors. Nanlite recently sponsored a color theory class taught by Lindsay Adler, an award-winning beauty and fashion photographer and educator. We were allowed to film the event and share the video above so that more people could benefit from the material and improve their use of color.

The class covers everything from the basics of color theory, to selecting color in pre-production, to manipulating color in post-production processing to fully achieve the desired result. You'll learn about complementary colors, triadic color schemes, and everything in-between.

The workshop took place in Lindsay Adler’s photography studio and there were six different sets for fashion portraiture with professional styling, hair, makeup, wardrobe, and powerful LED fixtures and light modifiers. All of the lights used were from Nanlite.

Lindsay’s photography workshops are well known for their effectiveness and how much useful knowledge you walk away with. If you ever have the chance to attend one in person, jump at the opportunity. Also, keep an eye out for more Nanlite workshops. We're organizing a bunch of them now, and hopefully we'll host one in your area soon!

What lights did Lindsay Adler use?

If you're curious about the lights that were used in the video above, here they are in the order that they appeared.

To capture the stunning portrait above of the woman in the red dress, Lindsay used a single light, the  Nanlite Forza 720B Bi-Color LED Spotlight, with a large umbrella modifier, similar to the Nanlite Silver Deep Umbrella 135. The Forza 720 lights feature a built-in umbrella mount. The new Forza 300 II, 300B II, 500 II, and 500B II spotlights have umbrella mounts as well.

The LED tube lights that Lindsay used were the new  Nanlite PavoTube II 30C, and she was rocking the 4-light kit. These tubes provide eye-catching color, precise color-accuracy, long battery life, the ability to run on AC, control through Bluetooth, 2.4G, and DMX/RDM and more.

Lindsay Adler's choice for the background light was the new  Nanlite Forza 300B II Spotlight. This light is surprisingly powerful for its size, it can run on V-Mount battery or AC, it's bi-color and has green-to-magenta shift, and as I mentioned earlier, it has an umbrella mount built-in.

The light Lindsay used to project that richly colored light onto her model was the  Nanlite Forza 60C RGBLAC Spotlight. The 60C features a six-color mixing technology that provides incredibly vibrant colors, in addition to highly accurate bi-color and 5600K daylight tones.

The optical device that Lindsay had mounted on her Forza 60C was the  Nanlite Forza PJ-FMM Projection Attachment. The PJ-FMM uses a lens that greatly intensifies the output of the attached light. There are blades that allow you to cut the light into different shapes, and you can blur or sharpen it by focusing the lens. You can also insert gobos to project patterns, or use the separately available adjustable iris to create fine circles of light.

Thanks for checking out this post and watching our video. We sincerely hope it helps you in your creative endeavors!