HOMEMADE TINFOIL REFLECTOR PHOTOGRAPHY FULL

You can also hang tissue paper inside a window to diffuse and soften natural light. You can use this for a background light to add color to your composition or shine it directly on your subject to wash them with color. If you use colored tissue paper, the light will take on the color of the paper. The flash becomes a 2-foot-square modified light source. Unwrap it, and make it as flat as possible, then fire your flash through it. Take some white tissue paper-from a gift bag, for example. The reflected light will fill in shadows with the color of the paper, adding another colorful dimension. Grab some fluorescent poster board and use it as a reflector. Then fire your flash through the balloon technique mentioned above, and the light will reflect up for a pleasing portrait light. Place one on the floor and have your subject sit on it. These lightweight blankets used by first responders cost about $1 and fold down super small.

© Natalee Martinez SILVER MYLAR EMERGENCY BLANKETS. The speckled umbrella gives a colored effect to the light. Finally, flick some food coloring or dye on an old shoot-through umbrella. If you put colored tissue paper in those holes, colored light will come through in patterns. Every time you move the rod back and forth, the light pattern will change.

HOMEMADE TINFOIL REFLECTOR PHOTOGRAPHY FULL

If your umbrella is really falling apart, poke it full of holes. Or spray paint it for something totally different. This creates a completely different quality of light.

Do you have a silver umbrella that’s in disrepair? Grab some matte silver material to put it in the umbrella rather than the standard chrome material. If the umbrella light is too harsh, hang a white sheet between the model and the light source so that light comes out of the umbrella, covers as much of the sheet as possible, then shines through sheet as a large, diffused light source. If you’re shooting with an umbrella and light is spilling everywhere, close it for a much smaller, focused source, or move the rod closer to the light source. If you’re wearing a white T-shirt, you can point a flash at yourself and reflect light off your shirt back onto the subject. The inside of a black hoody absorbs light like a velvet backdrop. When you can’t find what you need around you, look on you. Your next image could be something that lasts forever, something that defines you, and it could all begin with something you pull out of the garbage.” YOUR CLOTHES. Just worry about creating something that speaks to you. Don’t worry about the way other people are doing things. As a photographer you have all the control in your hands. So use your imagination and create what you need. Everything in photography was an invention at some point. “If you don’t have it, invent it with what you have and adapt it to your methodology. Once an old modifier is done, it’s done, so you might as well have fun with it.Įquipment limitations don’t have to limit your creativity, says Miranda. And if you have gear that’s seen better days or not giving you what you want, modify the modifier. So when your creative vision extends beyond what’s in your bag, look around for everyday items that can be turned into creative light modifiers. You can’t carry everything you’ll ever need in your gear bag. It’s not the properties of the modifier that matter it’s the properties of your use of the modifier. If you understand that and you stick to your core principles for using light, then you can do great things no matter where you are.”ĭon’t be hemmed in by “accepted” practices, urges Miranda. Really, it’s just a matter of looking around you for things that reflect light, things that absorb light, and things that change the size or shape of light. “All light is predictable, and as long as you understand it, you can make it work. “No matter how much gear you have, in the end it’s up to you to make things happen,” he says. To Miranda, there’s no real distinction, so long as he’s able to create the intended effect. That could mean using a full studio setup worth thousands of dollars or pulling items out of the trash on the streets of New York.

Seth Miranda will present a session on creative lighting at Imaging USA 2020.įrom the early days of his career as a teenager shooting for BMX magazines to his current work photographing beauty, makeup, and special effects imagery, Seth Miranda has sought to sculpt light with whatever materials he had at his disposal.

Homemade tinfoil reflector photography