faces like silver and gold. Opaque panels can be used as reflectors or gobos. You can turn a translucent panel into a large soft box by putting a basic reflector behind it and goboing off the sides. More Jargon. When translucent material is used to soften light falling on a subject, it's called a "scrim" or a "silk." If clear material, such as neutraldensity acetate, is used to absorb intensity without affecting form, it's called a "cutter." Photographers, ever resourceful, use a variety of items to get the light to, or keep it from, the picture. Here are some such devices: • Mirrors, especially handheld ones, are easily clamped to a light stand to bounce a little light, with very minimal loss of strength, wherever it might be needed. • Aluminum foil, crumpled up and then laid out flat, makes a hard fill card. • Heavy duty black foil, called Cinefoil, is used to create
A Image 23: Reverse cookie.
makeshift barndoors or snoots, especially if an oddball shape is needed. • Almost any shape can be used to create a "cookie," an object that is lit from behind and casts a shadow of a given shape onto a background. Cookies are useful for breaking up a large expanse of evenly lit background by introducing shadow. • I'm not superstitious, and wasn't worried about the decades of bad luck facing me after repeatedly dropping
22 < part one: the principles of portrait lighting
a box of glass mirror tile onto a rock. After breaking it nicely, I took the larger shards and glued them onto a small sheet of plywood (image 23). When the mirror pieces are hit with hard light the reflections throw fabulous patterns. This "reverse cookie" does things no other modifier can do (see the cover of this book).