In this video I'll show you how to use a
mirror to make it reflected portrait in
your small home studio.
Hello I'm Gavin Hoey, and you're
watching AdoramaTV,
brought to you by Adorama, the camera
store that's got everything for us
photographers, and today you join me in
my small home studio, where I'm going to
show you how to turn this household
mirror into some amazing reflective portraits.
So all I need to do is to get
the mirror out of the frame, then we'll
get a light set, let's get a model in
let's get shooting.
Check me out today, I've got the amazing
Jas, Jas is gonna be the model for this,
and we're all set up for the shoot, but
before I get going, let's talk a little
bit about the mirror, so I'm using a
glass mirror.
This is just a standard household mirror,
if that's what you're going to use as well,
make sure you do some preparation
before your model gets here.
Make sure the edges are all nice
and soft, just to make sure they are safe.
Next is going to be cleanliness, you
honestly can't clean your mirror enough,
so make sure you have a cleaning spray
and a soft cloth because you're gonna
have to clean this constantly.
Next thing to do is,
think about the size and shape
of the mirror, basically you want the
biggest mirror you can get...
I've got this one, so this is what we're
going to use.
I have a rectangular mirror which means
I've got two ways of possibly shooting.
I can have it either wide or long.
Now the obvious answer is to have it wide..
As you can see, this works really well.
We have a nice reflection,
we'll talk about the background in a little bit,
but you'll notice that the length of my
mirror is quite short...
so if I want to get more reflection....
More at the front, I'm actually gonna spin
this mirror around.
So let's just rotate that around like
that, and I'll take the same shot again.
So now I've got a lot more reflection
and mirror in the lower half of my frame,
but obviously I've lost a lot of width,
and that means I'm gonna have to crop
these shots a little bit tighter.
Personally I prefer it, because the more
you have coming towards the camera, the
more of a reflection you'll have to play with.
The background in this shot is my
white pop-up background,
and you probably notice in the pictures,
it's not really coming out white...
it's sort of a muddy grey,
and that's because of the light at
the moment.
I've got a single eVOLV 200
lighting Jaz, but by the time the light
travels to the background,
it's lost some of its intensity,
and the background is under lit.
So if you want a pure white
background, and I do, you need to light
that background separately.
So I've got a second eVOLV 200.
I'm gonna pop that right behind Jaz,
pointing at the background.
Now for this to work I need a
lovely evenly lit background, and in a
big studio that would be fine, but in my
small home studio, that could be a problem.
Let's take a picture and have a look.
So as you can see in the center, it
is beautifully white.
That works really well,
but by the edges it's dropping off
to a gray vignette, and in the
reflection that's even more obvious,
because the mirror is going to reflect
all of that background, even the bits
that aren't directly behind Jaz.
So what I've done is, I've added a third
eVOLV 200.
So now I have the background lit by
two lights, they're a little bit further
back from Jaz, so none of these lights
are gonna actually reach Jaz, they're
only gonna light the background and give
me a nice even illumination, but how much
illumination is the right amount?
Well I could do trial and error, but if you've
got a flash meter, you can meter this
exactly, and get a nice clean white
background without losing any detail on
your model. So the way it works is this, I
know that the light on the front of Jaz
is f/4, we metered that earlier.
How much light is on the back is what I'm really
interested in, so I'm going to get my flash meter.
I'm gonna meter off the back of
Jaz's head, and at the moment, with the
flashes on their lowest possible power,
I'm getting f/2. So I want to go up to
f/4, so I'm going to increase the power
of both of these lights the same amount
until I reach f/4.... bingo.
There I am... so with that set,
I should have perfect exposure
straight out of camera with my very
first picture.
Let's have a look and there we are...
first picture, absolutely pure white
background. Then there's the
position of the main light, I had it in
front of Jaz, but of course you don't
have to keep it there.
It made sense, it's sort of a beauty
lighting look with a reflector below.
But what happens if I move it behind, well
this should give a much more intense
slightly more shadowy look, which could
work really well with the reflected image.
let's try it see how it goes, and
that gives a very different look and
feel to these pictures.
So that's the lighting setup.
What we need to do now is
to take this basic idea, and mix it up a
little bit so let's do a shoot.
Jaz are you ready?
Here we go....
You look right down...
so you're going to
look right down on top,
into the mirror.
Okay that will probably two hands in
it's gonna be symmetry in there.
And bring and arm up and lay it out to the side
Then the head slightly...
With this one it's a bit more direction
of the light is.... behind...
by bringing your
other hand in as well.
For this shoot I spent time getting the
lighting right... ages cleaning that mirror,
we even had a hair and makeup artist in,
so you might imagine there's very little
post-processing to be done,
and you'd be basically right,
but there's always something!
Let's have a look...
so at first glance this picture looks great.
But look a bit closer, particularly at the
reflection, and you'll notice some odd
things like the weird highlighted
reflection, and if I go to the right hand
side, yep, I missed a large chunk of
mirror just there, now both of those
problems are fairly easy fixes,
using either healing or cloning here in Photoshop.
So to do that, I'm gonna go to
layer...new layer...
I'll give it a name you don't have to,
but I'll call it clone and
then I'm gonna use not the clone tool,
but the healing brush.
With the healing brush I'll check that
'sample all layers' is available,
and then all I need to do is sample a good
bit of the image... hold
the Alt key or the option key on a Mac
click somewhere where it's not damaged,
and just paint over the top.
remember to re-sample, move your
sampling point around
and build the effect up.
I think what that is is...
just a reflection off the glass.
It's the angle of the light and
the low quality mirror, and maybe I just
didn't clean that bit well enough, but
this area is all down to me, where I
missed a large chunk of mirror...
bit more tricky to do,
but all I need to do is sample the line of
the arm...
so I'll sample there, hold the Alt key and
click and then I can line that up,
and just paint it in,
and it should all line up and look
pretty good.
Again just remove any weird areas like that...
Okay, there we go, so that's fixed,
what about the mirror itself,
well the mirror I was using was a thin
glass mirror, and that means I've got two
reflections from the glass, and the
mirrored surface below other mirrors
will have different effects, but when you
look close, it doesn't quite work how I want.
At first, glance it's okay, but if
you look at it, it's it's definitely
blurred, that makes sense from the double
reflection, but it's not completely
blurry, and it's not completely clear.
I want one or the other, so to make that
blurrier I'm actually gonna apply an
effect, but first thing to do is to
remember to either save this image, or if
you're confident just go to layer and
flatten it down.
Right, filter there's lots of ways of
doing this.
I'm gonna use blur and tilt shift.
Now this is a really simple filter,
it's got four lines, and I'm gonna get
rid of two of them by getting this upper
line and dragging it up above my model.
That leaves me a Center Point...
a solid line and a dotted line.
The solid line is zero blur,
and I want to line that up
really with the models arm,
and then the lower dotted line is 100% to
the effect that we dial in.
I'd like this just to graduate out
a bit like a depth of field effect.
Which is what this whole thing is
designed to actually make.
The amount of blur will vary,
depending on the resolution of your image.
I'm gonna go for something mid to high
twenties something like that, and then
just click OK, and that's it done.
The effect takes a moment to apply,
and with a few other adjustments and tweaks,
there it is.
There's my final reflected image completed.
I've always thought that
having a mirror in a small home studio
is a really bad idea because of
reflections, but it turns out if you're
using the mirror as a prop,
it's a great idea.
now if you've enjoyed this video
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I'm Gavin Hoey, thanks for watching.