Day Light vs Reflector vs Flash | Take and Make Great Photography with Gavin Hoey

Gavin Hoey

Gavin Hoey is a freelance photographer, writer and trainer of all things photographic. His work is regularly featured in photography magazines, websites and videos.
Gavin has a real passion for sharing his photography and Photoshop knowledge. In 2008 he started recording and uploading video tutorials to YouTube. These quickly gained a large following and to date his videos have been viewed over 20 million times.
In 2010 Gavin was the winner of Adobe’s “Next Photoshop Evangelist” competition and since then he has given training demonstrations in Photoshop, Lightroom and Photoshop Elements in the UK, Europe and the US.
In 2012 Gavin joined forces with Adorama as a presenter on Adorama TV, where he inspires and teaches photographers from around the world in the art of photography and post processing.

There are many ways you could light your subject on a location portrait shoot but they break down to essentially using just the ambient day light, bouncing extra light on to your model with a reflector, or adding artificial light from something like a flash.

In this video tutorial, portrait photographer Gavin Hoey looks at how to get the best from all three ways of lighting, by trying them all out in one shoot. Gavin finds three locations, each of which should play to the advantages of certain light. He then passes on his top tips for working with daylight, a reflector, or flash.

By then end of the session Gavin has photographed the same model in three locations, each time using three types of light. Which is best is something that only you can decide.

Interested in learning more about portrait photography and lighting? Take a look at these guides on 42 West:

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