Using Adobe Camera RAW, I adjusted the exposure and enhanced the blacks to bring out even more sharpness. I used an f/2.8 aperture to draw more attention to the cake stand. With the backlighting and white backdrop, you will likely need to overexpose from what the meter tells you - my shot, for example, was at +1.3 EV. Once you get those two down, you’re ready to take a glass photo. Setting up the light and controlling the reflections are the toughest parts of photographing glass.
Step 3 in Glass Photography: Shoot and process. Or, for less defined edges, use white on the sides to block the color of the room from reflecting in your shot - this is similar to the effect that you’ll get from shooting inside a light tent. But, you could apply the same concept to add a color tint to the edges of your glass. Using black on the edges works well because it creates more definition. If you don’t have a black backdrop, you can use black foam board on the sides of the shot - you can usually pick up a sheet for under $5. I’m all about taking great photographs with minimal investment (just like these guys) -instead of dragging out backdrop stands, I put laundry baskets under the backdrop (real classy, huh?). Essentially, I created small black backdrops on each side of the shot to eliminate the green hue. To eliminate the green tint, I brought the edges of the backdrop up on the sides, but out of the frame. And no - you don’t have to paint an entire room to change the colored reflections.įor my shot, I place a reflective piece of the acrylic display board (try this one AbleDIY Black & White Acrylic Display ) over a black backdrop. Glass is highly reflective, and even though the backlighting prevents you from actually being able to make out the objects in the room, the colors in the room can still be reflected in the edges.īy controlling the color that’s reflected in the room, you can control the color of those edges. Guess what color the walls were in the room I shot the photo in? Yes, green. You can read in detail on it in Harold Davis’ post on photographing flowers for transparency. If you want to achieve a “true white” background, try using a lightbox.
A light tent designed for product photography will also work well to get a backlighting effect. With a large softbox as the background, you’ll get the same backlighting, but you won’t get a gradation effect from the light being more intense in one section of the reflector. If you don’t want a white background, you can use gels to change the color of the light that’s being reflected.Ī large softbox can be used as the background to achieve a similar effect. Placing a light off to the side or underneath the table but directed at a white reflector (or even just a white backdrop) bounces light back through the glass, resulting in a soft backlight. The simplest solution is to use the background as the light source itself. With a transparent object, that’s a bit tougher to do. When backlighting glass, however, another issue arises: how do you hide the light? When setting up a portrait, it’s easy to hide the hair light behind the subject. But backlighting is the best way to light a transparent, reflective object like glass.įront and side lighting will create “hot spots” of light and reflect the surroundings, but backlight will eliminate reflections and help define the edges. When I set up my product shoot, I ended up backlighting the clear bottle for rather silly reasons: I wanted to overexpose my white backdrop so I didn’t have to spend an hour ironing out all the fine creases. What did I find? Successfully photographing glass is all about light and reflections - you have to control both for a great shot. Grigonis for Simply Owl Naturalīut, my spontaneous experimenting got me thinking - what’s the best method for glass photography? So, I set out to find a tried-and-true method for photographing glass and other transparent objects.
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