I loveeee trying new things! If you've ever gotten to spend any amount of time with me, you've probably learned pretty fast I am always down to try new food or a new restaurant. I'll often show up wearing a new type of outfit I've never worn or a hairstyle I hadn't tried. And trying things doesn't just stop with food or fashion, I love trying out new things within my photography.
Through the years, I've played around with different lighting, styling, creative elements, locations, and editing. Some have turned out awesome and some not so much. So I want to share with you 3 creative elements I use in my creative portrait photography that I've kept coming back to!
First, I love using mirrors! I originally started using them in my self portraits. I love the way a mirror adds more light and fills in more of the same vibe in the shot with the reflection. It's also been fun to play around with clients and their reflections in them while also trying to avoid capturing me in the reflection as well lol. I think mirrors are a great way to add reflected light, prescriptive, or to help focus the eye.
Next, is plastic wrap! When you wrap it around the edges of a lens it can give a dreamy blurred affect or with the right lighting a light blur. It's such a perfect element to incorporate in creative portraits because it can look so etherial and dreamy. The easiest way to get the plastic wrap to stay around the lens is to use a hair tie or rubber band around the lens to hold it in place.
Finally, my most recent discovery has been double exposures. I use these not only in my portraits, but also in my event photography. All of these double exposures are done within camera. Most often I use the additive setting. Additive just fills in the underexposed parts of the first photo you take with the brighter parts of the second. There are so many possibilities of how you can style double exposure. In the photos below, I added two photos almost on top of each other to give a motion blur effect, flipped a photo to give a mirrored effect, and greatly changed the position of the second photo to give a look of a photo within a photo.
I hope these elements inspire you to try new things within your photography! I would encourage you to always try new elements a few different ways. Often times we just have to get accustomed to how the element looks and works in a photo to figure how to best fit it into our shot. Get out there and let the creativity flow!