Two Creative Looks with the Godox LA150R and LA300R

Futuristic RGB Portraits: Two Creative Looks with the Godox LA150R and LA300R

By Conrad Knuist · Head of Marketing and Photography Specialist · Godox Specialist · 18+ years in photography

Standard white light portrait photography is reliable, safe, and forgettable. If you want something that commands attention, you need colour. The Godox Litemons LA150R and LA300R are RGBWW LED lights built for exactly this: precise, programmable colour output that gives you full creative control over how a portrait feels.

In this tutorial, photographer and educator Gavin Hoey demonstrates two distinct futuristic portrait looks using the LA300R as the primary key light and the LA150R as a versatile second light. Look 1 uses the LA150R with a reflector as a coloured edge light. Look 2 replaces the reflector with the Godox BP-SE projection attachment to throw a sharp circle of colour onto the background. The results are strikingly different, and both come from the same two-light rig.

The Godox Light App ties both looks together, letting you dial in exact hue and saturation values and switch between colour presets without leaving your camera position. At CameraStuff, we carry the full Litemons R-series range.

Why Standard Portrait Lighting Falls Short for Creative Work

Most studio portrait photography uses white light: a softbox, a key, some fill, a clean result. This approach produces technically correct images that are easy to replicate and easy to retouch. It is also, in most cases, visually uninteresting. The viewer has seen it thousands of times. White light portraits read as competent, not distinctive.

Colour changes that. The moment you introduce a specific hue into a portrait, you shift the emotional register of the image entirely. Cool teal reads as futuristic, clinical, and powerful. Warm pink or purple reads as soft, editorial, or cinematic. The choice of colour is as compositional as the choice of angle or aperture, and until recently, achieving precise colour in a portrait required either gel filtration over flash heads, complex mixed-light composites in post, or access to expensive cinema lighting.

RGBWW LED lights like the LA150R and LA300R bring that precision to a compact, portable, app-connected system. You dial in exact hue and saturation values, preview the result on your subject in real time, and adjust from your phone without breaking the shoot. The barrier to intentional colour in portrait photography has effectively disappeared.

The role of colour in visual communication and emotional response, per Wikipedia: Color Theory.

Portrait photography techniques and lighting approaches, as documented by Wikipedia: Portrait Photography.

The Two Looks: How Each Setup Works

Both looks start from the same base: the LA300R through a softbox, dialled into a teal-blue using HSI mode with a hue value of 210 and saturation at 75. This gives enough colour to read clearly on the subject while still letting natural skin tones show through. From there, the LA150R determines the creative direction of the image.

Look 1: LA150R with BR30 Reflector, Colour Edge Light

The LA150R with the included BR30 reflector is positioned at roughly eye height and angled just slightly in, catching the edge of the subject's face and spilling colour onto the background behind them. The hue is set to 280, saturation at 75, which puts it in the purple-to-pink range — contrasting with the teal key light and creating a two-colour portrait without any gels, post-processing, or complex compositing. The LA150R runs at just 3% power because the reflector concentrates the output so efficiently that anything higher would overpower the key light's intended role. The result is a clean, intentional colour separation that reads as deliberately designed.

Conrad's Advice

Before you spin the hue dial and hope for the best, spend two minutes with a colour wheel. Complementary pairs like teal and orange, or analogous combos like pink and purple, work because there's actual science behind them. Designed beats accidental every time.

Look 2: LA150R with BP-SE 65mm, Projected Circle

For Look 2, the BR30 reflector comes off the LA150R and the Godox BP-SE projection attachment with 65mm lens goes on in its place. The key light stays exactly where it is: same position, same colour, same power. The only change is what the LA150R is doing behind the subject. Instead of an edge light, it now projects a sharp, defined circle of colour onto the studio wall. Power goes up to 25% to get the circle to read clearly without going pure white. From there, swapping the colours between the two lights using the Godox app takes about ten seconds and gives you a completely different set of images: pink key light on the subject, blue circle on the wall. Same rig, reversed palette, entirely different mood.

Conrad's Advice

Stop walking back to your lights every time you want to tweak something. Pair them in the Godox app, stay at your camera, and dial in colour and power from your phone in real time. It sounds minor until you do your first preset swap mid-shoot and suddenly feel like a lighting wizard.

The HSI colour model and its use in defining hue, saturation and intensity, per Wikipedia: HSL and HSV.

The RGB colour model and its application in digital display and lighting, as documented by Wikipedia: RGB Color Model.

Getting the Most from Your RGB Portrait Setup

Background Choice Matters as Much as Lighting

Gavin demonstrates this in the tutorial by switching from a textured background to the plain white studio wall mid-shoot, with identical lighting. The results read completely differently. A plain white or very light background allows the projected colour to show fully and keeps the viewer's attention on the colour relationship between subject and scene. A textured background adds its own visual weight. Neither is wrong, but understanding how the background interacts with your colour choices is part of controlling the final image.

Circle Brightness and Saturation in Look 2

The power level on the LA150R when running the BP-SE is a creative decision, not just a technical one. At high power, the projected circle tends toward pure white because the LED output overwhelms the colour saturation. At lower power, the colour comes through more strongly but the circle may not read clearly against a darker background. Gavin found 25% to be the useful starting point for getting a defined circle with visible colour. Your specific background colour and ambient light level will shift that number, so experiment across a range before committing to a power setting.

Using the Colour Reversal in the App

One of the more practical techniques in the tutorial is colour reversal: instead of reshooting from scratch with a different palette, Gavin simply swaps the hue values between the two lights via the Godox app. The key light becomes the colour that was on the edge light, and vice versa. This effectively doubles the number of usable setups from a single physical arrangement. Programming both colour states into the app before the shoot means the switch takes seconds, with no interruption to the session.

Our Verdict on the LA150R and LA300R for Creative Portraits

The LA150R and LA300R work well together precisely because they share the same colour system, the same app connectivity, and the same accessory mount. What the LA300R sets up as a base exposure, the LA150R refines with colour. The two-look structure in this tutorial is a clean demonstration of that: one light does the heavy lifting, the other does the creative work, and switching between the two looks requires nothing more than a modifier swap and a few taps in an app.

For photographers who want to move beyond white-light portraiture without investing in complex colour-grading workflows or elaborate set builds, this rig represents a genuinely practical starting point. The colour precision available through HSI mode gives you repeatability, the app gives you speed, and the BP-SE opens up background projection that most portable LED systems simply can't do. CameraStuff carries both lights and the full range of LA-series accessories.

LA150R vs LA300R: Choosing the Right Light for Each Role

The LA150R and LA300R are designed to work together, not against each other. The LA300R's 330W output makes it the natural choice as a key or primary light: it has the power to expose correctly through a large modifier and dominate the scene. The LA150R at 165W is better suited as a secondary, accent, or projection light, where you want precise colour contribution without competing with the key. Both run on the same RGBWW system and both work with the same LA-series accessories, so whatever you build with one, the other can extend.

Specifications

Godox Litemons LA300R

Godox Litemons LA150R

As specified by the manufacturer. Source: Godox.