Ah, the good ‘ole reflector. The very inexpensive, best thing money can buy reflector. OK, so you have a client who just MUST shoot at 12:30 PM OR you have a wedding when formal pictures will take place at 1:00 PM. You are just screaming in your head…”WHY MUST YOU TAKE PICTURES DURING THE HARSHEST SUNLIGHT OF THE DAY?!!”. Well, first, if it was a portrait client of mine, I would never be put into that situation. I will always schedule their session during “The Golden Hour“. However, weddings are a different story. Sometimes you just have to go with the punches.
The reflector that I use is called a “5 in 1 collapsible reflector“, which takes a little practice collapsing. :-)
So, I decided to take out my best 5-year old model and show you the difference between reflected and non-reflected images. All of the images below are SOOC (straight-out-of-camera, no editing done) and were taken at 12:30 PM on a bright and sunny day here in beautiful Denver, CO.
When looking at the images below, make sure to look at the eyes and shadows. Using the reflector simply eliminates big shadows under the eyes and helps the whites of the eyes “pop” a little more, saving me a TON of time in post-editing. Colors seem to be a bit more vibrant, too. The two comparisons below are using the SILVER side of the reflector.
.jpg "Using a reflector in photography, denver, co")
.jpg "Using a reflector in photography, denver, co")
The next two examples are using the GOLD side of the reflector, which helps warm up the image a bit. One thing I wanted to point out in these images was Ryland in the very last photo…when you are using your reflector, you can TOTALLY blind your subject by reflecting light back into their faces, so make sure you feather the light…either step back further (which I couldn’t do, since I was both shooting and holding) or don’t shine it directly at their faces, maybe shine it a little lower. This will eliminate them from squinting so much. In the last comparison, I really eliminated some hot-spots (look at the snow and his jacket), which also will help in post-processing.
The next step in shooting during harsh hours of the day is using your OFF CAMERA FLASH!!! You will LOVE the before and after shots of this test, which will be posted SOON!!! :-)
Keri Doolittle is a Denver Wedding Photographer who specializes in local and Rocky Mountain weddings, along will destination wedding photography.
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[...] is a follow-up post to my “To reflect or not to reflect” post that I did last week. Last week, I chatted about shooting during the middle of the [...]