Using Mylar for Photoshoots: Trending Studio Setups
WITH GRONDE PHOTOGRAPHY
As Brandy and I were in the process of creating new designs for Background Town as part of our initial launch, we were inspired by Italian Mosaics and Venetian Fountains. We finally landed on what became the Fountain Mosaic Tiles background that is available now on the site.
When we received our 10x8 Ultra Cloth background at our studio, I KNEW I wanted to really show off the “fountain” feel. In a perfect world, I would have filled our main shooting bay with water to have our model standing in a “fountain”, but obviously our landlord and insurance agent would not have liked us very much.
Fountain Mosaic Tiles
Fountain Tiles , Multi-Color Backdrop for Photography
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FIRST SETUP
I remembered seeing another photographer use mylar to create interesting lighting effects and reflections and knew that if I was going to create that same ambiance, that this was going to be my best bet. I hopped onto Amazon and ordered a simple roll of Mylar Film. This is the same material that some ballons are made out of, but you can just order the raw material by the roll.
The first style I wanted to try was to create a lighting effect that resembled the reflection of light off the water. We hung the roll of film off a boom arm and then just used the unrolled mylrar as a “mirror” to reflect the light. We used a Godox S30 Focusing LED Light as the main light for this, but any constant LED style light with 60w or more power should be plenty. I suggest using a constant light rather than a flash because you can see what the reflection looks like in real time and adjust the mylar film as you need to before shooting. We aimed the light directly at the film which then lit our subject and the background with the reflection from the film. The waviness of the free hanging film (don’t hang any weights off the bottom of the film just let it hang free) is what causes the ripple effect and makes it look like water. We shot with regular white light for a few and then also used a blue gel to give it an even darker and moodier look of the inside of an Italian Grotto. We added another light with a full CTO (warm) gel from behind her to add some warm light to very cool photo to make it look like a sunset coming from the mouth of our make-believe grotto.
SECOND SETUP
The second setup we did was to law to strips of mylar along our floor and have our model sit on the floor on top of the “waves” of mylar. We still used the Godox S30, but added the SA-P 85mm Projection Lens to it. After adding a warm half CTO gel to it, we could create a perfect circle of light and light our subject with a warm sunset. The lower you shoot (I was almost laying on my stomach for most of them) the more you can get the reflection of your subject in the wavy mylar film. It also acts as a reflector that will bounce some of the overhead projector light from under your subject which will give them very even lighting.
We loved how all the images turned out and had a blast showing off this background and demonstrating some of our mylar tips and tricks in the Background Town booth at Shutterfest in April of this year! You can watch the FULL behind the scenes video of our mylar shoot on our YouTube Channel.
