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This is how you shoot silverware with perfect reflections with only 1 light

Nov 22, 2021 by Alex Baker Leave a Comment

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It’s all business in the front and party in the back with Dustin Dolby from Workphlo‘s latest product photography tutorial video. This time he’s showing us how you can get some very professional looking images of silverware, using very basic gear: just one Speedlight.

Shiny objects are notoriously difficult to photograph well. The key thing to remember when shooting anything shiny is to light the reflections, not the object itself. Additionally larger light sources (relative to the size of the subject) are going to be your best bet for shooting anything highly reflective.

First, Dustin clamps the inside diffuser from a 5-in-1 reflector to an arm just above the camera. This is going to diffuse the light and essentially make it into a larger light source.

He puts the Speedlight inside a strip box placed behind the silverware and the diffuser. He experiments with the height of the strip box a little to move the hot spot around off the blade of the knife so that it looks a little smoother. This is why shooting products tethered to a camera in live view is often useful.

Dustin goes on to show how you can use this exact same lighting setup to create a variety of shots and moods, simply by changing the background surface and props.

In ACR post processing, Dustin adjusts the white balance to taste and then sets the vibrance and saturation to 99 to keep an RGB colour space but completely desaturated of colour. He then boosts the whites until clipping appears, then backs off a little.

Once in Photoshop he duplicates his background layer and does a basic clean up of any imperfections using the patch tool. You can find additional imperfections by playing with the curves layer and making it into a bit of a radical curve it will show up many more things to retouch than you would notice otherwise.

Dustin says that photographing flatware can be challenging but ultimately rewarding once you understand how to make those reflections look really good.

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Related posts:

Five tips to get perfect reflections in your landscape photos The Leica SL2-S – Not perfect, but perfect for me How To Shoot a Perfect Watch using only an iPad How To Shoot The Perfect Shoe Splash

Filed Under: Tutorials Tagged With: cutlery, product photography, silverware, tabletop photography

About Alex Baker

Alex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe

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Alex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe

Dave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.

John Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

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