Tag Archives: Simple equipment

How to tackle the problem of reflections and highlights with glass

• Photographing anything translucent requires treatment that defines the shape •

• Photographing anything translucent requires treatment that defines the shape •
Photograph by Phillip McCordall

Make the best of your resources.

Making the best of your resources is important. Expensive equipment is out of reach for many photographers. Using simple equipment and home resources helps. Glass presents particular problems. This tutorial will help you to tackle the problem with glass and learn more about using simple resources.

The problem with glass

By its nature, the translucence and reflectance of glass creates special problems for photographers. Translucence means that the definition of glass is lost against the background. Reflectance means that general highlights and specular highlights in particular can cause problems. Success in photographing glass is about learning to control those things. It is all a matter of using reflectance to define the glass and placing the light in the correct way for it to illuminate.

Using a simple house light and white and black cards, this tutorial helps you to control highlights to emphasise the glass and not create nasty highlights. You learn about good quality composition with a glass and a few tricks of the trade. Win:win I think.

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By Damon Guy (author and Photokonnexion editor)

Damon Guy - Netkonnexion

Damon Guy (Netkonnexion)

Damon is a writer-photog and editor of this site. He has run some major websites, a computing department and a digital image library. He started out as a trained teacher and now runs training for digital photographers.
See also: Editors ‘Bio’.

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