You’ve probably heard, at some point, someone refer to the “Golden Hour” of photography. There are actually two Golden Hours: the first and last hours of sunlight each day. These are the ideal times to shoot outside, because the sun is low, glowing red or orange or yellow, and it’s casting shadows that add depth to your pictures. But what about all those other hours in a day, when the sun is high in the sky and everything is bathed in a flat, colorless wash of light? You’ve got to keep up with it by moving the reflectors around to account for the sun’s changing position, while also keeping in mind where you want the light to hit your subject.
Figure out the right exposure settings before you start working with the reflectors. Use a translucent light panel above your subject, using something like Photoflex’s LightReach Plus, to soften the ambient light. This keeps the light from flooding the scene and washing out the shot. Place a reflector off to the side to bounce the light back onto your subject. Here, they use a 39-inch gold-white one so that it casts a warm glow on the scene. Make sure the reflector isn’t pointed directly at your model; having the center of it pointed just off your subject and reflecting off its edges work best. You can use another soft white reflector on the opposite side of the first one, to slightly reduce shadows (and therefore contrast).
Using reflectors can be a project in itself, knowing at what degree to angle the reflectors to catch the right amount of light. Just to bounce off your subject to illuminate them. I've used a regular piece of poster board to create a soft illuminated light for portraits, so finding useful thigns around the house could vastly improve your lighting.