Anyone here photograph Glass?!

P

pablob

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Paul
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A friend of mine whose a glassblower would like me to try and come in and grab some shots similar to these http://www.londonglassworks.com/gallery.html (hopefully that should link to a quick flash gallery).


I'm guessing glass in probably going to be inheritantly awkward due to it's reflective nature?

I will read up on it but if anyone has any tips I'd appreciate it

Cheers

Paul
 
From a purley profesional point of view - I would lbe facinated to see a polarised, and a cross polarised shot, as it is being blown

Cross polarised means the light source has a polariser that is 90 degrees to the one in fornt of the lens

(done a lot of work with glass in the past)

For shooting it - ask Garry Edwards - I imagine it is qute tricky getting the mood + the lighting right
 
You should not have too many problems. the shots you show were taken when the metal (glass) was still red hot and it was glowing.
Flash or the like would kill it and available light is the only real option.
The problems come when the glass is cold and transparent. then what you are really shooting is what you can see reflected in it or through it.

then black and white reflectors strategically placed can work wonders to give both form and outline.
 
You'd certainly need an off-camera lightsource. Preferably diffused as well, unless you want specular highlights all over the place. A skylight would be ideal, but there's other things I could think of as well.

Toothie did something interesting along these lines recently... She might pop in!
 
I assume you want to take shots of the finished products, as well as the manufacturing process? I'm not entirely sure about the manufacturing shots as I've never done them, but for glassware you need to bear in mind that these objects are translucent, you only can see the light coming through them; they don't have (or have very little) diffused light come off them, unless they have labels etc on them. Which means that if you will really need to get light from behind the glass (in the form of illuminated backgrounds), and directly on camera flash is a no no, it will look horrible! The important thing is, the background has to be lit, and lit well, you don't see the glass, you see the background THROUGH the glass.

The next thing you need to decide is if you want a white background with black highlights, or black background with white highlights. I suggest for white backgrounds with black for lighter tones.

What you can do is place your background directly behind your glass object, lets call that 12 o clock. Then place your 'highlights' be it a black board or white reflector to the side of the background, say at the 10 and 2 o clock positions. These can be moved towards the 6 o clock direction to get more/less coverage of highlights.

Here's one I tried black bg/white highlights:

3437916288_46fea68f82.jpg


The labeled was from another photo I took, was giving me headaches lighting glass and reflective label at once! (and I only had 1 flash back then too!)

And an early setup shot of white on black(label is illuminated by onboard preflash from Nikon CLS):

3437916206_a2638511cb.jpg


I don't profess to be an expert, but these are the results I got experimenting with just 1 flash and a few white and black tablemats I got from Ikea. I shot the flash through the white boards (they were frosted).


To be honest, I'm just trying to explain the book "Light, science, and magic" LINK, its a cracker! Explains it a lot better than I do, but well worth a read.
 
Blapto said:
You'd certainly need an off-camera lightsource. Preferably diffused as well, unless you want specular highlights all over the place. A skylight would be ideal, but there's other things I could think of as well.

Toothie did something interesting along these lines recently... She might pop in!
Click to expand...

pablob said:
Thanks for the tips guys!

Hopefully this toothie person will drop in but i'll have a search for some other threads on this topic:)
Click to expand...

Hi

not overly sure what Blapto is refering to i can only guess it is This shot

Taken with natural light, the window was to behind and to the right of the glass, shot on a tripod, i wanted a slow shutter speed for the water i was pouring. Then PS curves to make the background more black.

I hope that helps, if Blapto ment something else and can point me too it i am happy to explain what i did :)
 
I used to do a lot of glass shots, mainly for fun, and yes they are some of the hardest studio still life shots due to the reflective nature of the subject.

Lighting from behind and careful use of flags to darken or define edges can bring out some nice results

4glass.jpg


Trev
 
Richard King said:
From a purley profesional point of view - I would lbe facinated to see a polarised, and a cross polarised shot, as it is being blown

Cross polarised means the light source has a polariser that is 90 degrees to the one in fornt of the lens

(done a lot of work with glass in the past)

For shooting it - ask Garry Edwards - I imagine it is qute tricky getting the mood + the lighting right
Click to expand...

sorry to go off topic, but wouldn't light thats polarised perpendicular to the lens's polariser not pass through so wouldn't show at all?
 
No !!

Spread your fingers on both hands and hold them at 90 degrees over each other, there are gaps between where the lines cross
 
david1701 said:
sorry to go off topic, but wouldn't light thats polarised perpendicular to the lens's polariser not pass through so wouldn't show at all?
Click to expand...

Absoloutley.. and if there was any stress in the glass, it would show as a rainbow - try it with 2 polarisers and a flexed plastic ruler
 
The light from the source yes, you are quite right. but light that is distorted around the glass does show up.

It's a technique that is used in microscopy to see crystal structure for that very reason. The crossed polarisers cut out all the source light, leaving the light that is refracted by the crystals.

Explanantion here if you are mad enough to read it! lol

http://www.microscopyu.com/articles/polarized/polarizedintro.html
 
AliB said:
The light from the source yes, you are quite right. but light that is distorted around the glass does show up.

It's a technique that is used in microscopy to see crystal structure for that very reason. The crossed polarisers cut out all the source light, leaving the light that is refracted by the crystals.

Explanantion here if you are mad enough to read it! lol

http://www.microscopyu.com/articles/polarized/polarizedintro.html
Click to expand...

Its a technique used by spectacle makers (who have a clue) to ensure there is no stress in a glass lens
 
Blapto said:
I meant the alphabet thing you did on Thursday!
Click to expand...

ok thats plastic which is why i didnt think of it :)

there is a picture of the set up on my flickr - basicly i used off camera flash to backlight it, with a white duffusing cloth inbetween very little post processing just twequed in lightroom a bit.

PM if you want more details.
 
@ Richard King

thats awesome, i would try but I only have one polariser and its a cpl, though that makes perfect sense and would make for an awesome photo
 
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