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Portrait Photography Tip: Use Reflections off of Buildings to Add Extra Punch to a Portrait

Chris Gampat
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05/02/2017
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Last Updated on 05/02/2017 by Chris Gampat

If you’re a portrait photographer who loves to shoot in natural light and who also lives in a big city, here’s a great tip for you. Tall buildings on cities are often reflecting light off of one another and therefore creating a type of specular light. Imagine it sort of like sunlight being reflected off of a mirror. This reflected light acts like a natural photographic reflector and therefore gives subjects a bit of a spotlight look.

So what’s so great about this light?

First off, this light is oftentimes soft because windows on buildings are typically far larger than the people being photographed. Soft light is the easiest to work with when it comes to creating flattering portraits. In fact, it’s an essential to most portrait tips out there.

Second, because this extra light source is present, it’s also often best viewed in the context of surrounding buildings with some sort of darker background or element in the scene. This natural contrast combined with the light being reflected onto your subject will make them stand out a whole lot more from the scene. This makes shooting in parks sometimes very easy to do.

When using this technique, you should look at the ground first as you’re walking around to spot these reflected lights. Then consider the major rule of portraiture when it comes to colors: keep it simple. Make the background one color, the skin tones another color and the wardrobe another. With that said, all three elements will stand out just enough from one another to make it work.

Third, you should know that this type of lighting has limitations. It’s best taken advantage of around the Golden Hour–but preferably before it starts to come into full bloom.

Phase One IQ3 100MP Portrait
This type of lighting is sometimes used to create the Rembrandt look: which by definition creates a small triangle of light opposite of the light source’s direction on the person’s face. It’s a very popular look.

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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.