Translucent Objects and Wrap Around Light
Well, it has clearly been too long since I made a photography post. So, I have something that I think will be good. I read about a technique for photographing shiny and translucent things where the light is designed to wrap around from the back. You don’t need a lot of fancy equipment to make this work. The first image of a Gatorade bottle was really because that was what I found first.
The setup shot is shown below. Like I said, it is pretty simple. I happen to have a Westcott translucent panel, but you could easily do this with something like a sheet or white nylon fabric. I put a single light behind the bottle. I then taped a small black piece of poster board directly behind the bottle to serve as the background. It is only big enough to fill the background in the picture. The bottle is sitting on a table covered by some black cloth. I put the camera on manual exposure and adjusted until I got a good exposure. All of the light is wrapping around the black poster board.
I made another similar setup, but this time, I wanted a reflection at the bottom. I placed a piece of crystal on some shiny black paper (I forget the actual name). The only difference in this picture is that I also placed something overhead to keep the keep the white above the crystal from reflecting in the shiny base.
I’m really happy with the results. I hope you get a chance to try this out for yourself.
