Very first fashion/potrait shot

Wilh93 · May 24, 2015

So my buddy does motorcycle Vlogs and he had some freebies from a company callled Riding Rich, they wanted him to do some sort of promotional thing so he had me onboard to do some photoshoots.
Ive never shot something like this before what do you guys think? Oh and he prefered nto to have his face shown.

tirediron · May 25, 2015

Not bad. The main issues I see is lighting. Pulling all of the detail out of black clothing can be tricky. Effective use of some large reflectors would have helped a lot.

Wilh93 · May 25, 2015

Thanks for the insight. I actually don't have much money for equipment and I've never used reflectors before. Do you have have tips?

Derrel · May 25, 2015

Reflectors can be made out of foam core boards, like those sold at office supply places, or art supply shops. White works well, but silver foil or silvered contact paper can also be glue to the surface on one side. Manfroto makes some interesting "frog gig" or "pitchfork" type holders that penetrate into the foam and have attachment provision for grip equipment to help position the boards. Other options are things like car windshield sunshade dealy-bobs, or fabrics stretched tightly on PVC pipe or wooden frames (look up 'scrims' on Google). A scrim frame and a reflector frame are basically the same thing; the scrim with a semi-transparent fabric, the reflector an opaque fabric that will reflect light; and with a black fabric, it can be considered a "subtractive reflector" or a "flag", to "flag off" stray light.

My biggest tip is that while round, sping-open wire-frame reflectors are popular and portable and low-cost (look for 5-in-1 Made in China ones to see what I mean), square or rectangular reflectors have some advantages as far as placement and positioning; they can be plopped on the ground, and the bottom edge will stay put, and if a second frame is clipped to the top, or side, the reflector will stay in place pretty easily as long as it is not windy.