Reflectors: Not just for Sunny Days
The ability to shape and control the light on a subject is one of the most significant technical skills that set a professional apart from an amateur photographer. Film and digital sensors do not “see” the same way that people do. Where your human visual system can instantaneously compensate for huge variations in illumination levels, film and digital sensors do not share this ability.
Most of us are familiar with the idea of using a reflector of some sort to provide light to brighten the shadows created on a sunny day. But don’t put your reflectors away when the clouds move in. Particularly if you photograph people, you will find a reflector can make the difference between a good photograph and a great one. Cloudy days are always described as the best time to photograph people. The soft even light opens up shadows, relaxes facial expressions, and results in better colour saturation. In effect the open sky above your subject becomes a huge “soft-box”. However, there is usually one problem with cloudy days… that big “soft-box” is situated directly overhead your subjects, resulting in shadows under the eyes and chin, and if your subject is wearing a hat, a good portion of their face will be in shadow. The solution is simple… just pull out your collapsible reflector.
The first picture here shows the effect of overhead cloudy light; note the shadows under the eyes. It’s not a particularly bad image, but the eyes lack the sparkle of a catchlight and as a result appear lifeless. Now, if we ask our subject to hold your small collapsible reflector off to one side and below her face, we can direct some of that overhead light back into her face to open up those shadows and even out the lighting and put some life back into her eyes. You can judge the results for yourself in the final image on the left. Collapsible reflectors are available from a number of suppliers such as Flexfill and Photoflex to name two. They come in a variety of sizes from a 12 inches (30 cm) or so, up to 5 feet (150 cm) or more in diameter, and generally collapse to about 1/3 of their open diameter. I prefer examples with a bit of warmth to them, either gold in colour or in a stripe pattern of alternating gold and silver. The opposite side of all my reflectors is matte white, which I find most useful on sunny days at close distances to the subject. A good general purpose choice for people photography would be a white-gold (white one side, gold on the opposite side) reflector of 38 to 42 inches (approximately 100 – 110 cm). In addition, I always carry a smaller 20 inch (50 cm) white/gold reflector in my camera bag. It collapses to about 7 inches and tucks neatly down the side of my bag. It’s smaller that I would sometimes like, but it’s always the case that any reflector is better than no reflector. Yes, you could use fill flash in instead, but the effect rarely appears as natural as a reflector. Collapsible reflectors are an inexpensive way to separate your images from the "pack". They are a simply indispensable necessity for any photographer who favours people, flowers and macro work.