A Novel Use for Reflectors (Image by mamma tang)

Note to self: tin foil does NOT make a good reflector unless your subject is blind or wants to be.

Aaaah the magical power of reflectors. Reflectors are an amazing, versatile and cheap solution to most natural light photography problems and also have their place in the studio although here, I’m going to stick to information on how to use reflectors in natural, available-light photography.

Reflectors do exactly what they say on the box: reflect light. They are used to aim light into the dark spots on a subject to fill them with light and diffuse unwanted shadows. As we read recently in Veronique da Silva’s post on available light photography, we can get stunning results when we position models back-to-the-sun and place ourselves facing the sun. To combat the subject being a back-lit silhouette, you can use reflectors to fill in and aim the light where you want. The result is a subject beautifully lit by the sun from both the front and the back.

What is ‘available light’?

“rain” from cunyadenki

The following post highlighting some great ‘rain photography was submitted by DPS reader Martin Gommel from the blog KWERFELDEIN.

13 fabulous photos with rain – with these pictures, I would like to give you a little inspiration to do some photography on rainy days. Many people’s first thought when they see it raining is to put their camera away – however Stormy and rainy days are some of the biggest chances to shoot moody atmospheric images.

People struggling with the wind, wrestling with umbrellas, obscuring the face with their jacket, jumping or running around like they are being chased by blood-sucking aliens…. I tell you : When it really rains down you have an exciting and rare theater right before you waiting to be shot by a photographer!

So I encourage to to search for a place that gives you a good angle to shoot and that covers your head AND your camera and start shooting!

That’s it for now. Now I’ll leave you with some of best pictures with rain that the web has ever seen. Let’s get inspired!

“rain stroll” from jaxting

Our last Monthly Critique featured an image from Lynne Daley with a dream-like quality.  This process is sometimes called the Orton Effect and Helen Brady laid out a great tutorial for producing such images using only one image in her article The Orton Effect: Mimicking darkroom processes in Photoshop.  For those looking to create the same effect using two images, as was Orton’s original slide process, I’ll lay out the basic steps first and then give some creative options as there are a lot of different looks to be achieved with this tutorial.

Step One – In The Field

Step one of this process is to take the photos!  You’ll need two individual photos of the same subject.  I’d highly recommend shooting with a tripod to make life easier in the computer later.

Shoot the first image with a small aperture and in focus.  I chose f/36.  Overexpose this image by two stops.  These settings gave me a shutter speed of 5 seconds which introduced some blur into the far tree, which, for me, works in this situation.  ISO 50.

Weekly Assignment

We took a look at the way that Windows can enhance photos in different ways. Windows can create frames, be part of the background or even be the subject of a photo. You can be looking out, looking in, or looking through, but the use of windows can add a new dimension to your photos. Our winner this week was cheesee’s “Jail”. There was something about this photo that kept drawing us back in. Maybe the composition, maybe the tones, or maybe just the human element and the way it looked like she was reaching out towards us. Our first runner up was makaio14’s “I’m blown’ this popsicle stand!” which was another creative look at escaping out the window. The shot was …

A much requested feature from our readers is the ability to show images IN comments. Previously readers had to leave a link to their photo sharing site page but now you also have the option to embed an image into a comment. You can see this feature in action in the comments section of our last weekend photography Challenge.

To embed an image into a comment look for the line that says ‘You can add images to your comment by clicking here’ underneath the comments fields at the bottom of our posts. It looks like this:

Click the link and a little popup window opens up where you can submit a URL of an image. Please note – the URL that this needs is not a flickr page where is shown

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