Photography is basically light, capturing the light and turning it into a photo.
I post on a very technical message board, that is really run by people who know their stuff. Most are older so they have been around since the film days and can really give great advice. You have to have some real tough skin though because they can be harsh. I don't mind, because I know I can improve and the day I stop believing I need to learn is the day I stop loving photography.
This exercise was on a whim. I took the kids on a walk, determined to use one of the most inexpensive lighting accessories avaliable; a 5-in-1 reflector. I believe I purchased from Amazon.com for 15 dollars or so.
So here is the first photo. A lovely girl, playing outside. For this, I moved her so that she was backlite, meaning the sun was behind her. If you notice the background is bright, but her face is poorly light. Usually what I would do in this situation was expose for her skin, meaning to make her skin bright, this would in turn blow the background out completely, the background would be so bright, you would lose all the detail of the trees, the fence, and most likely you would not be able to see the play structure.
Here in this photo, I used the gold side of the reflector and just feathered it to the right of her a bit. Now I'm still learning this, so she did get a bit of a flash of bright light a few times (sorry) but you can see it fills in the dark shadows on her face without me having to blow the background. It also gives a bit of detail and depth exposing for her skin only would not allow.
Now the above example is not a true test because in the first photo my shutter speed was 1/800 and in the 2nd I had adjusted it down to 1/500. So I noticed this while going through the photos and had her pose again, this time with the exact same settings. Both photos were taken with 1/500, F3.5, and ISO 200. This first one has no reflector. Not a bad picture, but still the shadow on her face, giving her the "raccoon eyes" look, really bugs me. I feel that my photos, if taken professional for a client, should not have these shadows. I should be able to manipulate the light in order to avoid these types of shadows.
The 2nd photo is also take with the silver side of the reflector. Notice the lights in her eyes, gorgeous catch lights that the above no reflector is lacking! You can also see in the no reflector photo, the top of her gorgeous curly hair is blown, no detail can be made out of the top of her head, in the below photo, while it is bright, you can still see the detail of the hair, the curls.
I also wanted to try some full body shots. I have two reflectors, one is actually for exposure, with a black, white and grey side, and the other side is silver, this one is smaller. It is the one I used in the 2nd set of photos above.
For these full body shots I used again the gold reflector. So as you can see from this photo, we are in partial shade of a tree. This makes for very dappled light. The girl is underexposed, normally I'd up my exposure, blowing out the background and you can already see her hair and parts of her shoulder are blown just from F4these settings. I used the same settings in both of these shots, 1/400, F4, ISO 200.
This 2nd photo was take at the same settings, 1/400, F4, ISO200, but you can see how much more light the reflector pushed on her, even adding depth and dimension to her hair and skin!
Now, I am not saying this is a perfect example but it has really pushed me into wanting more and more practice with different lighting, adding fill with reflectors and even getting into some off camera flash.
I hope you enjoyed my little lesson and I'd love to see your examples using reflectors and without!
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