studio lighting - photographing glass workshop

As part of our studio lighting brief we were to complete several workshops on specialist lighting. One of these workshops was on photographing glasses.
We were given a hand out that explained the basics of photographing glass to achieve results like this:

http://www.havens.co.uk/royal-scot-sandringham-pair-large-wine-glasses-16799p.html

 

There are two standard ways to photograph glass, one is on a white background with black details as above, the other is on a black background with white details. To do this, you photograph your glass against a lightbox. To create black details, you place the glass in front of the lightbox, with black blocking cards either side. To create a black background with white details, you place the glass in front of the lightbox, but this time put black blocking card behind the glass leaving the light areas either side of the glass.

I forgot to take photographs of my set up and so have made a simple example of the set ups in Photoshop. (click the images to enlarge them)





Here are the photos I created using this technique:

This next image was created by simply inverting the white background photograph:



I think the white background shots have much grater clarity than the black background shots.
I used a wide aperture on these images (f/4) this blurred out some marks on the light box, and more importantly, kept only the front of the glass in focus. If I had a less shallow depth of field, the detail on the back of the glass would be more visible and would create a distracting and confusing image to look at. This way the cut glass is visible and it is easy to see the pattern on the glass.

After taking these images my tutor the suggested using coloured transparent plastic to give a different effect to the glass:

This gave an interesting effect and could be useful as colour can associate with a brand or a particular drink.
After looking at a few websites selling glasses online, I think my photographs are easily on par with many I saw.

I also played with adding colour to the glass in Photoshop, this could be useful to make an image appear slightly coloured for the same reasons as I mentioned before. I used the quick select tool to select the background areas of the photos and make a template, I then coloured this in blue and orange to add coldness or warmth to the image:

You might use a cooling filter to create the impression of the glass being ice like, and the warming filter to give an air of luxury.

The glass workshop was easy to follow, and when done correctly produced some good results, this is the second attempt at the task, I found it easier to work alone and got much better results when I was allowed to work my own way.


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