Original subtitles

One of the easiest and most affordable ways

that you can add a bit of light

to your subject is using a reflector.

And of course, as the name suggests, you

are reflecting light and then pushing it towards

your subject.

Now, when we talk about lighting, we've often

likened lighting to water.

What all we're saying is we're ricocheting that

water onto the subject, and that way you've

almost got two light sources.

In other words, if the sun was coming

from behind me, I've got one hair light,

backlight, rim light, whatever you want to call

it, one light this way, and then it

reflects off a reflector and comes back on

me.

So it's an easy way to add a

second, third quality of light with just a

reflector.

Now, you may have seen them before.

Often, if you do own one, you'll probably

own a five-in-one reflector.

One side is black, one side is white.

If you unzip it, inverse it, one side

is gold, one side is silver.

And in the inside, you have a translucent

diffuser, which basically means that you've got light

going through the reflector, but you can't see

through it.

Now, let's look at the differences and let's

see how we can identify them.

Now, here we have Rainy, actually, one of

our good friends here.

Basically, Rainy is just in open shade.

There is a direction of light, as you

can basically see, and the direction of light

is beautiful.

As I've told you before, I turn the

body away from the light source and turn

the face back in.

Now, when I add a white reflector to

her, so I'm putting a white reflector, now

she's turning her face back in, but you

can see that the light is more contrasty.

So, the highlights on her face are more

contrasty, it's brighter, and the actual shadows are

a little bit deeper because when you add

that light source, then you're going to actually

pay attention to the shadow a little bit

more.

So, we've got no reflector, white reflector.

Now, let's look at the difference between a

white reflector and a silver reflector.

Now, why would I use one above the

other?

Well, let's discuss it.

And, again, if you've heard me say this

in a previous segment, forgive me, but I

think it's important in the context of our

conversation.

If you had water ricocheting off stainless steel

or water ricocheting from a white cardboard, for

example, then what would ricochet more?

Well, as you know, you probably wash your

dishes every single day and every night, water

will bounce and deflect off, reflect, deflect, I'm

not sure the difference there, but whatever it

is, it will basically bounce off the stainless

steel and then, bang, it'll spray further than

it would, let's say, for example, a white

plaster wall.

So, what I'm getting at is that if

you already have an existing contrasty light, if

we liken it to water, if you already

have a high pressure hose, for example, let's

say the sun, the sun's already bright and

contrasty, okay?

It's got a lot of water pressure, so

to speak.

It's going to bounce off and deflect.

Now, if we have, let's say, a hazy

sky or open shade or clouds are covering

up the sun, then we need more contrast.

So, what the silver reflector will do, will

give you more punch, more contrast.

Can you use the sun with a silver

reflector?

Of course, you can, if you want that

very high fashion, very contrasty look.

Now, with brides, you'll find that, arguably, the

white reflector will be a lot softer, will

be probably the one that you use the

most with the sun.

If you are, as I said before, if

you're using in a cloudy situation, that's where

the silver reflector will basically come in.

Now, let's look at the difference.

We've got the white reflector over here, but

you can sort of see now that the

silver reflector has taken on the attributes of

sunlight because we're, basically, we're ricocheting that water,

so to speak, off that stainless steel, off

that silver reflector, bang, and then now we

get that beautiful contrast.

So, I'm not saying one is better than

the other.

It really depends on what look you're trying

to go for.

So, this is all about understanding, well, what

attributes are going to be given to the

subject.

What am I trying to say?

Is this a prettier look?

Is it more of a high fashion look

or feel that we're going for?

It depends on what you want.

Now, why would you use a gold reflector?

You can, basically, see how, obviously, gold is

going to give you a lot more warmth.

I find, personally, a gold reflector on, say,

Caucasian skin, it just, in this case, it

worked well.

I think we balanced the light quite well

and, of course, the white balance that was

in camera and the post-production, all that

kind of stuff, but ultimately, it's important to

know that Caucasian skin with that gold reflector

will sort of emulate golden hour.

Now, we love golden hour.

Golden hour is considered either the first hour

of sunrise or sunset, and it takes on

that beautiful quality of light, but sometimes on

Caucasian skin, it can look a little bit

like Oompa Loompas.

It looks a little bit weird.

I find when you have, say, African-American

skin and then you've got beautiful light reflecting

off a gold reflector, it saturates that beautiful

golden skin and just looks beautiful and luxurious.

So, it just depends on what you like

and what you prefer, but you see the

difference.

Silver, gold, you pick which one you want.

Some would argue this is too warm.

Some would argue that's not warm enough.

You can go in between.

You can do what you want.

It's really personal taste.

Now, let's compare because some people say, well,

what's the black side of the reflector?

What's the black reflector for?

Well, let's just get this straight here.

Black does not reflect anything.

It's not going to reflect anything unless there's

some sheen to it or some kind of

microfiber that's got something that's reflective or something,

but black will cut away light.

So, from the original photograph that we had,

that left-hand side, we've now got a

black side of reflector literally just here.

So, what it's doing is it's deepening those

shadows, therefore making her look more contrasty than

she was originally.

How do I do that?

Well, this is it.

You simply put the black side of the

reflector up and you're cutting away light.

This was pretty much the position that we

basically had for the other reflectors there as

well.

I just wanted to show you this because

most people will not understand the black side.

So, let's show you some more examples of

how we use a reflector.

First of all, so this is my wife

Melissa.

She's not actually reflecting anything at the moment.

So, what I suggest that you do when

you are reflecting light on a subject is

do not start with the light on them

because you sort of want to see what

it is without it first.

So, let me take away the light.

So now, she's just backlit.

I want to see what the back lighting

is doing.

You see, if I was to put the

reflector up, I might have turned her face

and now the sunlight behind her is tickling

her nose or her cheek and it's looking

a little bit scrappy.

It's looking a little bit dapply, which we

don't basically want.

So, I get her backlit, make sure that

there's no light in the front of her

in this particular situation at the very least.

Then, we turn the reflector towards her.

In this case, it was the silver side

from memory.

So, you can see how she's almost blinded.

So, this will normally happen.

So, just know that anyone with a reflector

on them, it does not feel good.

This is, like I said, this is a

small light source being the sun reflecting off

the reflector and ricocheting back in and water's

going in the person's eyes and they can

hardly see.

You have to liken light to water to

understand it as we've discussed.

In this case, we did it and I

said, okay, I forget her name actually, to

be honest.

I just got a bit of a blank,

but basically, I may have said to her,

hey, look at Melissa's hand on the count

of three.

She's closing her eyes.

One, two, three, and then bang, we get

that beautiful shot.

What have we done?

Now, you've heard me say with lighting, turn

the body away from the light and the

face back in, or we turn the light

away from the body and the face back

in.

So, it's either one or the other or

a bit of both.

So, in this case, we've turned the body

away from the light or the light away

from the body in a way that gives

us this beautiful texture, depth, and dimension, and

form, and we've got a shadow on the

cleavage on her shoulder.

We turn her face back into the light.

We've now created the short side.

She looks amazing.

We've got some beautiful negative space.

The quality of light in the backlight is

beautiful with the sun and the sun reflecting

off the reflector and we get a gorgeous

shot.

Can you use two reflectors?

Well, yes, you can.

If you had a couple of reflectors, you

can do that too.

In this case, we have two mini reflectors.

One is the silver one and one is

the gold one.

I'm not going to give you a prize

to know which one is which.

It's pretty obvious.

The silver one is on the groom.

The cool thing about a small reflector is

that you can illuminate the face and not

the body, and that's actually really cool.

So, in this case, you see that you

don't really get a glow on him.

There's open shade, so you get detail in

the suit and the dress and everything like

that, but I'm getting a mini reflector.

I'm bringing it away from his face to

where I just illuminate the side of his

face that's closest to the camera.

So, bang, I've got it.

I've got beautiful catch lights in the eyes.

Fantastic.

And, of course, we've got the sunlight backlighting

them, giving them a hair and rim light

and edge light.

And this way, I've got the reflector on

her, the gold side, the gold mini reflector

illuminating her.

So, I've got sort of that beautiful warm

tone for that feminine energy and that cool

tone for that masculine energy.

So, now it looks like we've got a

couple of strobes on these guys because it

doesn't actually mathematically make sense.

Well, the light's coming on this way.

You would broad light it here and this

would be in shadow, but if you had

two light sources above the sun, so the

sun's giving us two more light sources off

the reflectors, that's the way we're doing this.

So, it actually works really, really well.

Now, does a reflector have to be, does

a reflection of light have to be off

an actual reflector that was made for that

purpose?

Well, no.

Of course, anything could be a reflector.

It can be a shirt.

It could be a wall.

In this case, it was, in fact, a

wall.

So, here we've got the sunlight hitting this

white marble statue, giving us this beautiful soft

direction of light.

The light source is big.

It was small.

It was the sun.

Don't think of the sun as, oh my

God, it's massive.

Well, it's massive if you go close to

it, but it's so far away.

It's so small and it's very, very high

pressure.

So, that sunlight is actually just beaming right

on, giving us dense shadows, but I put

them in the open shade, ricocheted that sunlight

off that wall, placed them in a way

that gets that beautiful soft light.

And again, that's using a reflector.

Well, here's another cool thing.

So, on this particular shoot, so we're in

Venice.

We're walking the streets and if you've ever

been to Venice, it's a beautiful location.

It's a beautiful place and you walk around

these little alleyways and I was just begging

and hoping and praying that I would get

a shaft of light in the middle of

these two buildings.

So, I can see evidence of shadow on

the left and the right.

Not only did I find that sliver of

light.

So, if you can imagine, there's an alleyway

right here.

Sunlight is coming right behind, giving us this

beautiful glow.

Then what happened was that these two buildings

were joined by this little mini bridge or

another bedroom basically adjoining it.

Then what happened was that as I was

walking through the alleyway, I got blinded by

the sun.

So, I'm thinking, wait a second, if I

get blinded by the sun and the sun's

behind me, well now I have two directions

of light.

In fact, I looked up at the actual

building and the sun was reflecting off a

piece of glass.

So, sunlight, hair light, backlight, hitting the actual

piece of glass going back on them and

then I get this photograph.

So, you can see clearly that I've included

the flare actually.

I don't normally like flares but I think

it works in this case.

The sun is between those buildings giving us

this beautiful strong hair light and rim light

and edge light, hits the actual piece of

glass, goes back on them, beautiful direction of

light, beautiful negative space and it gives us

this beautiful strength about that photograph.

Again, that's using a natural reflector in the

environment.

As you've seen me discuss in previous segments

that you can also reflect off someone's face.

In this case, the sun was hitting the

back of them.

I literally just had Eric a little bit

closer to me.

Now, this was shot at about 1.8

so it's deliberately only her in focus but

the sun is reflecting off his cheek back

on her.

He gets that sort of strong masculine rim

light and she gets that soft reflection coming

back on that because what's happening is think

of it like the sun is reflecting off

a white sponge.

It's soaking a little bit of that light

but then ricocheting and bouncing off her.

So, it's making the properties of that water,

that light softer once it deflects or reflects

or ricochets and that's how we get that

particular look.

Now, ultimately guys that you know many of

us will use a reflector like this.

The sun will hit behind the subject, we'll

have the reflector in the foreground and then

we illuminate our subject.

Great, that works well but what about something

not so obvious?

If you look closely at the rim of

his hat, it's actually white.

So, what if I could take a fuller

length photograph and I'm able to use that

light on his face but without making it

look like he's literally holding it up to

reflect that light off his rim back on

his face, it'd look a bit weird.

So, I need to give him an excuse.

What excuse?

Maybe he's about to put his hat on.

So, if we look at these behind the

scenes shots, we've got the shot there on

the left where he's just showing us the

rim of the hat and now he puts

it up to his face.

The sunlight hits the back of him, hairlight,

backlight, rim light, hits the actual rim of

the hat back on his face and then

we get this beautiful glow and it looks

real and that's the cool thing is that

now I have no problem in making artificial

light or on-camera flash, off-camera look

fake as in there's evidence of flash.

Now, typically though, I want flash or any

kind of man-made light or light that

I bring to the equation to not look

man-made.

Does that make any sense?

Therefore, it looks more real.

I get swept up in that moment but

I typically though, it's really, really important to

me that if I can, that's what I

do is that I'm trying to make it

look natural rather than I've just got a

glorified light there and that's basically it.

In our next segment, I'm going to talk

about reflectors a little bit more but being

more specific, I'm going to talk about the

Omega Reflector 360, which is actually one of

my inventions.

Now, it's been four or five years now

in the making but I can't wait to

show you how versatile this tool can actually

be.