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A Clever Way to Photograph Glass

Jan 8, 2014 by Laya Gerlock 25 Comments

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Last week I shared an article about putting a granite tile to good use, there was one technique in that post that I wanted to expand and make a dedicated tutorial for because it’s one of the simplest yet a classy way to light glass.

What You Need:

  • Background (White Background – normally I use my white seamless paper)
  • A Granite Tile
  • Speedlight with Stofen Omnibounce or a gridspot

How to:

I place an SB-600 with a Stofen Omnibounce below the granite tile and pointed it at the Background. The purpose of the Omnibounce is to create a gradient effect on the background. The farther your speedlight is from the background, the bigger the gradient is.

Here, the granite tile is really close to the background (about 1-2 feet away). The light that will be coming from the background is the one that will light my glass.

Normally I shoot at 1/160 f8, ISO 200. And my speedlight is at ¼ power. 

Pretty simple huh?

Here are some shots using this technique:

Playing Around With Food Coloring

Playing with shapes


Using Gels on the background

Put CTO gel and CTB gel on my speedlight to get colors in the background.


Flame shot

For this shot I needed to shoot at a slower shutter speed to expose for the flame. I placed my camera on a tripod and instead of shooting at 1/160 (which will only show the light of my flash), I shot this at 1/10’s to expose for the flame (considered as ambient light). I used 70% solution alchohol for the flame. BE CAREFULL when doing this, the martini glass broke after doing this shot.

Defying Gravity

(Not Photoshopped) I’ll just leave you guessing how it was done. Pretty easy actually. – show us your guesses at the comments.


#BangonPilipinas

(Rise Up Philippines) Dedicated to my country, The Philippines.

 

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Related posts:

Default ThumbnailThis Clever Stop Motion Movie Was Made Entirely With Google Glass How to photograph glass like a pro How to photograph glass perfume bottles with one light for compositing These are 5 simple and clever tricks every filmmaker should know

Filed Under: Tutorials Tagged With: glass, home studio, lighting, studio

Laya Gerlock: from diyphotography.net

About Laya Gerlock

Laya Gerlock is a Portrait and Product photographer based in the Philippines. His passion is teaching and sharing his knowledge in Photograpy and has been doing this for 6 years. You can follow his work on his web page, follow him on Flickr and if you happen to come by Cubao, Quezon City (To Manila, Philippines) he gives a great workshop!

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