Using a Reflector in photography — Photography podcast #30

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #30 is all about how to use reflec­tors to bet­ter your pho­tog­ra­phy. We focus on com­mon types of reflec­tors, when to use them as well as why reflec­tors are an essen­tial item‚for every‚photographer’s toolkit.The fol­low­ing pho­tographs illus­trate how effec­tive a reflec­tor can be to add light to sub­jects that are in shadow or that need a lit­tle extra boost of light. Note how espe­cially the eyes of both my boy (Ziglet the cat) and my wife (pos­ing in ‘Pulp Fic­tion’ style)‚receive extra illu­mi­na­tion and become much more vibrant when a reflec­tor is used. Note that the expo­sure DID NOT change for any of the reflected/unreflected shots. I also did not do any manip­u­la­tion what­so­ever in a graph­ics pro­gram as I wanted to clearly illus­trate the effects of chang­ing only 1 vari­able. (adding a reflec­tor) You can click the pho­tographs to enlarge them.

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below this set of images.‚


Ziglet — No reflector

Ziglet — With reflec­tor — Eyes and face are vibrant

Ziglet — No reflector

Ziglet with reflec­tor doing its job in the photo

Carmy — No reflector

Carmy — With reflec­tor — Eyes and face are vibrant

Carmy with reflec­tor doing its job in the photo

New seg­ment in the pod­cast — Photography.ca — Photo of the week -
This week, the pho­to­graph is by Arkady Renko and I com­ment in the pod­cast on why I think this pho­to­graph is fantastic.

Photography by Arkady Renko

Other pho­tog­ra­phy links men­tioned in this pod­cast;
Flickr
Lead­ing lines in pho­tog­ra­phy
The rule of thirds in pho­tog­ra­phy

Thanks as always for the com­ments by‚Bekka, Al and Norm‚on our pre­vi­ous podcast‚where we Interviewed‚fine art pho­tog­ra­pher Rafael Gold­chain. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

Comments

  1. Gary says:

    Reflec­tors are won­der­ful, they give you addi­tional light sources very cheap. I have been using lightright reflec­tors for 22 years, because when I first started I could only afford one light source (a kinda soft box) The reflec­tors just work. LightRIGHTreflector.com

    GB

  2. admin says:

    Hey thanks for the com­pli­ment Norm!
    TOTALLY — you must try reflec­tors, they are amaz­ing and you’ll notice a BIG dif­fer­ence espe­cially if you’ve been using on cam­era flash to light your subjects.

    Small basic reflec­tors (COLLAPSIBLE) are cheap and should range in price from about 20 to 60 dol­lars depend­ing on sizes that I talked about in the pod­cast. I’m going to try to put up links to buy in the next few days.

  3. Norm says:

    Con­grat­u­la­tions on the 30th pod­cast, we’ll have to see about those pearls though…
    Any­ways, great show, I appre­ci­ated how you described dif­fer­ent objects that you’ve used as as reflec­tors when in a pinch. I’ve never used one before but I’m excited to give it a try. Do you know an aver­age price for a small basic reflec­tor? I live in QuÆ’‚©bec so the prices you would find would likely be sim­i­lar for me.

    Thanks! keep up the great shows!

Trackbacks

  1. […] under­ex­po­sure — shutter-speeds — using shad­ows cre­atively — wide angle lenses — pos­ing mod­els — using reflec­tors — stu­dio setups for begin­ners — cheap macro pho­tog­ra­phy — one light por­traits — low-light […]

  2. […] Thanks again to Norm for his com­ment on last week’s pod­cast reflec­tors in pho­tog­ra­phy. New seg­ment again this week — PHOTO OF THE WEEK This week, the pho­to­graph is by Zseike and I com­ment in the pod­cast on why I think this pho­to­graph is fantastic. […]

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