Improve Your Portraits With Reflections

There are many staple techniques for creative portraiture, and one of my favorites is shooting through glass and reflections.

Many of the portrait techniques I've grown to love over the years are either heavily inspired by, or an outright copy of techniques used in high end street photography. I love street photography's use of contrast and light, but I also love the many shots of people through windows. It is usually in a coffee shop somewhere in the city, but any glass that hosts reflections will do. There have been entire photo series based on this premise.

In this video, Matt Granger takes you behind the scenes on setting up a photoshoot with the express intention of using reflections for interest in the images. This can truly be done using any glass, and you can use water or lights to add the interest you desire. One tip I would give is to use manual focus if you don't want your camera hunting and missing focus regularly. Even with Eye AF, it's easy for the camera to get confused and latch onto a water droplet or reflection on the glass.

Rob Baggs's picture

Robert K Baggs is a professional portrait and commercial photographer, educator, and consultant from England. Robert has a First-Class degree in Philosophy and a Master's by Research. In 2015 Robert's work on plagiarism in photography was published as part of several universities' photography degree syllabuses.

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5 Comments

Naked woman in a tub full of "semen." Toss in flowers to soften the perv factor. Sometimes men and photography just make it "hard" to see beauty in capturing the human form without looking perverse.
Why is the model's hair so unkempt, a little mouse would work wonders.

Also, why do women show cleavage? Never understood why they wear dresses or tops that make horny men see their cleavage so blatantly. Take the Oscars, gowns showing cleavage and shoulders and lower backs. Why? Men know how to dress, they are elegant and have dignity bin a tuxedo that covers their body and shows their faces. Not women, of course not all but most, they have to let it all hang out and look so trashy. Ugh.

That's easy: likes and cash.

True. Sadly true.

What women do with their bodies or how they dress is nobody's business. I have never in my whole life thought of a milk bath in such a manner until I read your comment. But we all vary in perceptions and takes on popular portraiture, so.... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thanks for being open to my rant. Haha.
I know it is their choice to look trashy or not, but I will never change my mind about cleavage. When I go on a first date I always see how much shoulder and cleavage is shown; the more the sluttier.

But yeah, your photographs are no longer yours when you release them to the people. You can say it's milk, but everyone might see it as dirty water or rice milk or mashed potatoes et cetera and that is what it is. The best example is how an idiot low life woman is accusing Ansel Adams of sexist photography, even though the photos are of the beauty of nature.