Editorial Portraits with Mylar Reflective Paper

inspiration, shooting

March 4, 2023

Photography & Styling – Marina Williams

Model & Makeup Artist – Sophia Holmes

A few months ago, I bought a roll of mylar reflective paper on Amazon to use for a shoot and finally found time to bring this personal project to life!

I was in NYC a couple of weeks ago and grabbed coffee with fellow photographer friend, Brandon Woelfel, and he told me he had actually just done a shoot using mylar as well. For his images, he laid the material on the floor and had a textured painted dropcloth as a backdrop. Instead of hanging the mylar on a C-Stand to use as the backdrop, he pointed his lighting equipment on it on the floor and used the light that bounced to illuminate his subject. I’m super grateful for the tips he gave me on how to shoot with the material!

I really wanted to use the material as the backdrop itself, but I knew it would be a challenge to navigate the reflections I’d get in it. I tried testing it out in my at-home studio, but because my space is so small, it was really difficult to place it in a way to avoid reflections and properly set up lighting equipment, so I last-minute opted to rent a studio. Studio Elevn in Salt Lake City has a large white cyc wall so I knew I wouldn’t have to worry about the reflections of the studio – only my own!

My only regret when planning this shoot was purchasing a roll of mylar only 4 ft wide – it was quite narrow and because I had to position myself on either side to avoid my reflection, we were limited to really only getting tight portraits. Regardless, the images came out so gorgeous and I’m really happy with the concept!

I styled my talented model Sophia in a silver sequin turtleneck which she paired with a leather mini skort, chunky boots, and a cute leather newsboy cap. I also brought an additional black sequin jumpsuit which she changed into halfway. I asked her to try a silver eye makeup look and she absolutely killed it – it definitely added to the silver chrome vibe.

We started off using natural light from the windows, but soon after I closed the blinds and brought out my Godox SL60W LED light + spotlight projection attachments. We did some aiming the spotlight right at her, and then played around with aiming it at the paper on the floor and bouncing those fun light shapes on her face. We also got some shots bouncing it off the backdrop so the light reflections landed on the wall.

My biggest tip for shooting with mylar material is to be very careful of how your subjects face is reflected. In some of the shots where the laid her face right on the paper, her reflection was warped, but so clear it could look real. We were absolutely dying of laughter at the way her reflection looked in some images, but quickly learned that a way to avoid this is to wrinkle and ripple the paper near your subject’s face. On the images where she laid down on the paper, she reached her hand forward and wrinkled the paper so the reflection wasn’t so lifelike.

Although this concept can definitely pose a challenge, I found it fun to roll with the punches in order to still get strong shots. It definitely put me a little out of my comfort zone but that’s what made it so fun!

If you try this concept, tag me on Instagram! I’d love to see the shots you get <3

Check out my final images below!