I have displayed some contact prints of my lighting experiments so that I can see which images look stronger than others. I chose to experiment with the flash indoors as well as the lighting outside using the reflector to see the different effects they create. I do actually prefer the outside lighting images to the indoor images, they appear stronger and reflect the lighting better. This is a positive aspect as I will be shooting my fashion photographs outside anyway, I just thought by experimenting with both, this would be useful for my development.
These were just some experiments I did when playing around with the flash and reflector. I really like the effect of the gold reflector, it makes the image seem so much warmer and calmer compared to the rather cold images. However, I personally think that the facial tones appear more powerful when using the transparent reflector as the contrast is greater. The gold reflector seems to smooth out the tones so this wouldn't be as effective in a scene that's grungy looking that I want to portray. I have also experimented with the camera settings to see the appearance it makes as you can see with the blue tone image. All of my photographs displayed look like they have been taken with a Fish-eye lens which is something that I wasn't expecting when photographing, this I will have to be aware of when shooting on location.
These next experiments were achieved using the flash and the transparent reflector. I have photographed all these images as well as the previous four images in Becky's house so that I could see how well the lighting was indoors which I have explained for my screen prints above. I have tried changing sides with the reflector to see if it made a difference with the lighting and the right side is actually much brighter than the left side. This is something I should consider testing out for my shoots as one side could be much brighter than the other and this will obviously change the appearance of the photograph.
My next experiments were outside using natural lighting with the reflector, as it was bright enough outside anyway, I didn't think it was necessary to use a flash for these images. I have noticed that there are some light spots on some of my images so this I will need to be careful of when shooting my final images on location. Like I have explained above in the section underneath my screen prints, I actually do prefer the natural sunlight effect within these photographs which is why this is an advantage for my work as I have decided on location shoots for this project. In my opinion, I think the gold reflector works extremely well for these pictures, it enhances the colour of my model and works nicely with the tones on her face. I know I have said in my earlier annotation that the gold reflector wouldn't work for a grungy location shoot, I feel that I should experiment with this for these shoots I will be taking so that I have a range of effects to choose from. I have also included the under exposed images within these experiments to show where I was going with my test shoots and to show how I have developed my mistakes and corrected them appropriately. I am generally pleased with my progress of these images, I wasn't that confident with the flash and camera to start with and I have managed to create some strong tester photographs. Now I am much more aware of the problems that can occur with the flash and natural lighting and I am a lot more confident to photograph my final shoots on location :)
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