You can purchase rolls of the mylar from gardening supply or
packaging businesses. Its actual design use is for either hydroponic
gardening or gift wrapping. Although it comes in a wide variety of
colors, I mostly use the silver, because others give the skin a not-
always-pleasing color cast. A note about the mylar: although it is
highly reflective, you don’t want to use it for reflection images. It
distorts the reflection, giving you a circus funhouse effect. It’s easy
to end up with this type of reflection inadvertently.
Gels and Secondary Backgrounds. Gels and secondary back-
grounds can be combined to come up with dramatic images, as in
the profile of Michelle (facing page, top). For secondary back-
grounds, we draped two large sections of fabric with different lev-
els of translucency. One we lit with a purple gel to match her
lingerie and the other we lit in orange, a complementary color. To
light Michelle, I used a strip softbox directly above and slightly be-
hind her, then angled it slightly ahead to give a pleasing profile
64 MASTER GUIDE FOR GLAMOUR PHOTOGRAPHY
LEFT—To backdrop Shannon’s leggy C pose, we started
with white seamless sweep and mylar on the floor. Then I
draped a sheer chiffon fabric as a secondary background
and added pink gels on the background lights to match her
lingerie. I lit Shannon with a 3x4-foot softbox to camera
left. As beautiful as this pose is, only use it on a thin, long-
legged subject. If your subject has heavy legs, it will make
them look heavier. If your subject has a little tummy, don’t
do this shot with a bare belly; use a flowing top that fits
loosely around the midsection. Expose or cover as much of
her hip and butt as needed to get the look you want.
RIGHT—For Jennifer’s image, a red-gelled light at one stop
below the main light was angled between the two back-
ground sections to give it a pinkish cast, similar to her out-
fit. A large softbox was used to light her, with a strip light
at one stop below the main positioned directly above her to
provide separation and highlights on her hair. Jennifer was
posed at a 45-degree angle to the camera with the main
light at almost 90 degrees to camera left. This gives a two-
thirds basic view of her face. Placing her right foot farther
ahead than the left leans her away from the camera and a
little arch in her back gives her great curves. Tulle fabric
was added to the floor for a feeling of softness.