Original subtitles

Okay, so here we are.

What I'm gonna do now is demonstrate a

outdoor natural light reflection, okay?

What we've done is I've come down this

slope and I've got my couple up on

the crest of this hill and I've been

silhouetting them in between these two mountains here,

right on the bright spot of the sky.

And so now essentially what we're doing is

we're starting to combine tools, right?

We've done a straightforward silhouette, but in order

to bring the composition to the next level

or make it more interesting, I'm gonna experiment

by bringing in a reflection.

I'm just gonna use my iPhone for this.

And the reason I'm thinking that this could

be interesting is what I was doing is

filling the frame with what's interesting, which is

the sky, the mountains, and my couple, okay?

So I've intentionally excluded everything beneath my couple

from the composition.

So they're on the bottom edge and everything

is sky.

By bringing in the reflection, that allows me

to bring them up off the bottom edge

of the composition into the middle of the

frame and take this symmetry that I have

in the mountains and use the symmetry underneath.

So I'm essentially going to reflect what's above

them, highlights above them, down beneath them.

So it's gonna add some mystery hopefully and

some more symmetry.

So I'm exposed for the sky.

I've got my couple right on the bright

spot.

And this is what I was doing initially,

okay?

Framing them on the bottom edge.

Now I'm gonna bring in the phone, okay?

To bring in any shiny reflective surface and

then just start playing around.

And now if I compose down, bring the

couple into the middle of the frame and

orient the phone and I can play around.

I can actually reflect the whole scene.

So the couple and the mountains, which is

trippy, but I actually, let me make a

frame of that so you guys can see

that.

Or if I orient it, what I wanna

do is I wanna reflect just the mountains

and the sky, but not them.

Cause I find that even more mysterious.

Okay, so now I need some motion.

All right, Sachi Florian, hold hands there.

And frolic.

And back.

Okay, and again.

Okay, and just one more time.

Okay, just pause there, right there.

Now just stand holding hands, looking off towards

the mountains, side by side.

Okay, I'm just gonna do a static one

here.

Guys, can you come about a couple steps

back closer to me?

Okay, right there.

What I'm gonna do for this frame actually

is I'm gonna go right down and put

them on the top edge now and then

try to reflect the mountains beneath them and

the sky.

Yeah, that's perfect, guys.

And let's run back and forth now, just

a couple steps each way.

And back again.

Now I found the composition I like most.

They're up on the top edge and I've

got them and the mountains reflected down along

the bottom edge.

And back again.

It's really cool.

And let's just stand side by side, holding

hands, looking off towards the mountains and just

put your weight on one foot, like one

leg.

Yeah, and I'd like that, just, yeah, there

we go.

Okay, perfect, guys.

Great, so yeah, bringing in the reflection actually

really elevated this composition because it allowed me

to use that symmetry in the mountains in

a much more interesting, unexpected way.

It adds a lot of mystery and symmetry

to the frame.

So I can't remember the first time I

ever tried this, but I remember basically how

I was drawn into wanting to figure out

a way, essentially, to fill the frame with

what was interesting.

And that's usually, often that's, especially when you're

exposing for the sky, it's the sky and

basically the horizon line, whatever it is, skyline

or mountains or cityscape.

And I realized that by bringing in some

sort of a shiny surface beneath the lens

allowed us to reflect that interesting, those interesting

compositional elements and bring them elsewhere within the

frame.

So I think I just started trying it

one day.

I can't remember where or when, but it

was just, and actually, probably the first time

I tried to figure out the potential of

it was even without the camera lens itself

was just with the eyeballs.

Just bring it in like this.

And sometimes if I'm not sure what the

potential is, this is literally what I'll do.

I'll just bring the lens in, put it

right under the eyeball.

Anywhere you can put your eyeball, you can

put your camera lens.

And literally this reflects the entire scene.

The sweet spot focal length is in the

35, 24 to 35 millimeter range, anything wider

than 24 and you get the outline of

the iPhone.

And then of course, once you get up

around 50 mil or bigger than that, it

doesn't really work that well.

35 to 24 is the sweet spot.

The other thing that works well is to

shoot with wide apertures when doing this, because

if I'm shooting this up at like F8

or F11, you can basically, you can see

the shape and the outline of the phone

itself.

Whereas if you're shooting at a really wide

aperture, the phone itself is extremely out of

focus.

The reflection is sharp, but the phone itself

is very out of focus because you're focused

on the subjects, which are further away from

you.

So it adds a lot more mystery by

doing it that way.

So one of the most important things to

keep in mind with any kind of tool

like this, like technical kind of gimmicky camera

trick that we're doing is time and a

place and a purpose.

Just take the time to ask yourself, okay,

why am I doing this?

I was drawn to do this here for

good reasons and it resulted in a composition

that was more interesting than what I was

doing before.

But often we find ourselves as photographers doing

these things, and when you stop to ask

ourselves, why am I doing it?

It's like, well, there's no good reason.

And then we got to snap out and

go do something more importantly, right?

Like if there was some emotional moments happening

up there that I should be up photographing

instead of playing around with this.

So just keep that in mind.

And don't let this kind of pigeonhole you

into doing this, you know, more than necessary.

There's gotta be a good reason to do

so.

Really the most powerful use of a reflection

tool is to layer together multiple stories within

the composition, okay?

And so this allows us to do so

without necessarily just changing the position of the

camera or switching the focal length.

This allows us to bring elements of the

story from over there and over there, for

example, into the frame.

So that's essentially what I was doing here,

right?

It was bringing the story of the mountains

and the sky from up there and putting

it underneath them.