day 106 - reflection management

the problem with taking a picture of a highly reflective object is that any light you put on it is just going to bounce back off. the more reflective it is, the more of a problem this is going to be. the solution is that instead of trying to light the object, you instead light the room around the object.

this flask is just brushed metal, so it's not all that difficult to deal with. however, you have to decide what it is you want to do..... do you want to play up it's reflective qualities, or show off the texture more? for this picture i decided i wanted a bit of both.

with reflective objects (like all objects) the size of your light source determines how the light is going to be bounced back into your camera. large light sources bounce light back in a very diffused manner, so you get a lot of the texture qualities in the image. small hard light sources bounce light back more intensely, so you get a lot more of the reflective qualities of the object.

for this flask's reflective qualities, i wanted smallish light sources hitting it directly. so i set up a strobe far camera right, and a strobe far camera left with a silver reflective umbrella on it. this was the result:



that defines the reflective qualities of the flask. it doesn't tell us much about the surface of the metal, though. to show the texture qualities, you need a large light source. in this case i decided on two big pieces of white posterboard used as reflectors, one on either side of the camera. the result:



notice that it's showing you what's in the room.... that black shadow area in the middle of the flask is the gap between the posterboards where my camera is sitting. if i wanted to get rid of that shadow, i would push the two posterboards together so they're touching and cut a small hole at the joint to take pictures through. there'll likely still be a shadow area, but it'll be a lot smaller and more manageable.

i decide not to do that, instead i want to change the angle.... the flask isn't very dynamic in my current setup, i want more tension, suspense, maybe mysteriousness in the shot. so i pull back some to bring in more black area around the flask, and go higher for a (to my mind) more interesting vantage point. notice that you can still see that shadow area, but now it's close to the side of the flask instead of dead center like it was. it's much more tolerable like this.

so yeah, lighting the room... this is why car photographers always have giant swaths of white translucent silk, because a shiny car will show you everything that's in that room... good bad and ugly.

setup shot: