A Reflection On Reflectors

Very often, when I pull out my reflector during shoots, people always get round-eyed and ask, what is this for? My retort is usually very brief: “This is a reflector meant to lighten up the harsh shadows in your face that our lights might cause.” Not to mention the fact that it actually saves me a fill light. Especially on outdoor shoots a reflector is of great importance. It brightens up the shadows on your models eyes, under their noses and chins. Further, it can give the skin of your model a different color tone. Depending on which reflector color you are using, white gives the skin a neutral color effect, gold creates a warm tone, blue makes cool tones and silver can reflect the light in a very harsh and bright way.
But photographers don’t use reflectors only when they want to shoot models. Because the various shapes, colors and sizes reflectors are also used in other areas of photography. We use them also for table tops and pack shots where very small reflectors are needed like mirrors and card stock just to reduce the contrast between light and shadow.
In this picture I am displaying this week, I switched the common understanding of reflectors and used a mirror, not for a pack shot but for a beauty shot. As a photographer you can use almost anything as reflector, you just need to understand the effect that different surfaces can cause. In this particular case the mirror bundles light instead of spreading it. So it will not give you a soft light but many harsh high lights, which I was actually going for in this beauty shoot because I wanted to focus on the eye make up. So the light I positioned behind the model, to give her a nice corona, falls into an angle on a hand big mirror situated 45° to the right of my camera.
Working with a mirror as a reflector gives you fantastic light control. With it you can direct a portion of light almost exactly where you want it.
So we see again how simple house hold items can actually help us create good images when the budget is tight. It is just about being creative and always thinking outside the box.