This project was to look at using different materials to bounce light back into a subject and see what effects can be created. Luckily for photography I have lots of different coloured card so I largely used this to see the different effect colour had.
This image above was with no reflection. There was a little bit of reflected light back on the left hand side of the picture from the wall behind. Firstly I went for a black piece of card to remove this fill:
It's quite clear this black card has darkened the left of the image as we look at it by preventing any light bouncing back from this side. I then replaced this with a white bit of card:
This produced a much softer image with more even spread of light across the face, but still allowing enough of a shadow to mould the face slightly. I then tried a piece of foil, on the slightly less reflective side:
This has created a much more even spread of light, and apart from the harsh shadow on the nose, there is very little shadow to mould the face. I tried some different coloured cards next:
There is quite clearly a colour cast thrown in each of these images. The yellow gives quite a weird look, but if it was replaced with orange I could see it being quite useful to warm up the shadows. The blue is an interesting effect, and looks quite natural actually, producing quite a cold looking shadow. The red warms up the shadow, maybe a bit too much, but may give the impression of some emergency light about combined with the right lighting effects.
It is amazing how much you can change the look of an image just by using simple objects to bounce light into shadows. I can certainly see the use of some of the coloured effects, and definitely the white card to create much softer shadows. I even experimented with the shiny side of the foil, and when moved right, could create the effect of the reflection of water ripples moving across the face, which shows how an everyday object can be used to simulate certain locations in an image.
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