How To Use a Reflector – Part 1
I'm sure most of you already know the lovely Natasha, we know you're lovely don't we because you just attracted kisses from a tramp poor girl. Tasha isn't exactly being seen in in her best light right now, look we've got
strong sunshine going on this is the classical don't do situation for a portrait because the suns coming in over Jayne's right shoulder, look we've got a strong shadow going on here, there's a strong black shadow round Tasha's nose and round her eyes and when her hair comes forward this side of her face is really really bright and this side is really dark.
But what if I was to say I could magic that away? If I was to go cazam, you see how much softer that is? Look, so what am I doing? piece of white card, It's a reflector, well actually it isn't a reflector, it is a piece of white card. A reflector is probably the most basic easiest light modifying equipment that you could ever use. All I'm doing with this is just, and I think even from there you can see the difference on Tasha's face, just by moving the white card around. you could use anything there are purpose-built reflectors such as this last-elite which i'm gonna show you in a minute. You could even use a white envelope, anything will do as a reflector and where ever you move it to so you can get the light. The closer this is to Tasha I think you'll see the stronger the effect of the reflector.
So in here we
got a pretty strong effect but as I move back it becomes more subtle, I saw that sneaky look Natasha. It becomes more subtle as you move back and forth. wherever you put it, I'm using it now to soften these shadows but look see i could put it under here, look. Just to try and look at this area of Natasha's chin. So you could bring the light in from underneath. You can see how it modify's, now you wouldn't normally use a reflector in such an unsubtle way as we are here but I just want to show you what it does, but you don't just use a reflector to reflect light in you could use one to
remove it. if I come over here, all these shadows here are not particularly nice on Tasha's face, so let's remove all the shadows but instead of adding light, we're gonna take some light away. All I'm gonna do is put Tasha's face in shade.
Now there are no shadows but she's gone very dark, compared to the background, but if you increase your exposure a bit
and expose for Tasha rather than the park Tasha will look really really nice, a beautiful flat even light. Okay the rest of the picture has gone bright but it's still a look it's quite a kinda interesting look and it really really separates her from her environment. There we go, lot's and lot's of things that you can do with a reflector. So let's have a loot at the purpose built last-elite. You're being very good at keeping still. Thanks Nat. Right, so these things, they come in all sorts of colours, shapes and sizes, you can buy enormous great big things like this which you have to wrestle with to put away, you can buy little tiny ones like that which you can hold in your hand, would you? Thank you.
Right, look at that, cool isn't it. As you can see this one, we've got a silver side and if i reflect some light into the camera lens you can see just how powerful that reflects. I've also got a gold side on this one, some of them you might have a white reflector one one of them and silver because the white wont be as harsh wont be as strong as the silver light. if I just kind of scoop a bit of light onto Tasha with the silver thing you can see that is actually it's very
very very powerful indeed as I just scoop some light up.
Now something which is you need to think about is colour physics, the sun. The light is coming from over there coming this way so you need to scoop it up from this side to push it back into those shadows. This isn't obviously going to work if you're on this side because bit of a no brainer really isn't it. With the silver side we're putting in tonnes of light that's way too much I could move back quite a long way with this and still look at that, even from back over here hopefully not falling back into the river which you would love wouldn't you. I can still still scoop up light, look at Tasha's face, by just pushing some light it makes an enormous difference. That's it, get in close. Big difference, now the sun is going to be going in and out a bit, there's a couple little bits of clouds coming along so I quickly wanna show you what the gold sides for.
This will add colour to your picture, this is gonna scoop up some gold light and fill in the shadows with gold. So Tasha now looks like she's been in the tanning salon, so we're not only getting rid of the shadows we're sort of putting a colour onto Nat. Just flip it over to silver again so quickly, that's a neutral colour and the gold colour..
