Recently I have decided to try and tackle the shooting of people, places and objects that I haven’t spent much effort photographing before. Today’s entry will focus on my attempts to shoot objects that are highly reflective. Materials such as glass, jewelry and most metals can be a complete pain to shoot. If the lighting of these things isn’t done with great care and expertise, you can be left with unusable images. It is quite easy to have areas in a photo that are completely blown out and specular.

When shooting shiny objects, I prefer to use a shooting tent. The diffuse material allows me to use bare strobes instead of having to use softboxes. This saves me time as I don’t have to build and then break down the softboxes when I am done. In the past, I would use a couple monolights, each stuffed in medium softboxes or strips. I was usually able to achieve the look and feel I was after utilizing this setup, but it often was cumbersome having to move and position the lights. I also had to account for the power cord and make sure no one tripped over it.

I am a huge fan and follower of David Hobby, aka “The Strobist”. I stumbled upon David’s website, Strobist, a few years ago and immediately his site became one that I visit daily. David uses speedlights to handle 99% of his needs when lighting. For those that may not be familiar, speedlights (or speedlites for Canon shooters) are flashes that you attach to your camera via the camera’s hot shoe. I have used speedlights off camera in the past, but never realized how very versatile they were. By reading Strobist, I have learned so much about lighting and speedlights. I now use my speedlights a ton.

A while back, I bought the Strobist Lighting Seminar DVD Box Set from Midwest Photo Exchange. I didn’t immediately crack open and watch the DVD’s, I let several weeks go by. I finally starting watching and that was all I did for several days. I watched and learned and practiced and got better results in my photographs. David made sense out of things and I felt that I finally understood concepts I had not previously. David obviously understands the technical aspects of lighting but has a way of sharing his knowledge in a way that is easy to follow and easily understood.

Utilizing speedlights instead of monolights makes things much easier. I found that my speedlights can handle my lighting needs 95-97.23% of the time. I still use my large monos but not as much as I used to.

Finally getting to the topic of my post.

I will often make up assignments for myself and yesterday I chose to photograph some awards my daughter had received and kill two birds with one stone. This allowed me to get in some practice and to also share images of the awards with family members who wanted to see them.

Often when photographing reflective objects, people will pop up the camera’s built-in flash and fire away. This creates “hot” spots and it looks terrible. Care and forethought must be used and built-in flash isn’t the way to go. Off camera speedlight flash works very well, if you have some idea of what you are doing.

Using a light tent and two speedlights, I was able to quickly shoot the following images.

This one was a bit of a challenge as I needed to use enough light to have the round medallion at top visible, but not blow out the more reflective portions. In person the medallion is very dark and I was pleased that I was able to light it so it is seen fairly well in this picture. Overall I was happy with the way this shot came out.

The image below required setting the shutter speed for a long exposure so that the flash does it’s job in lighting the plaque and the text but then allows the wood grain and green of the metal plate to expose properly. If I had just blasted some light at it, the grain and green color would not be visible.

This next shot was a fairly straightforward capture. One speedlight on each side of light tent, angled up and diffused so as to not blow out any areas.

Lighting was different for this medal as I didn’t need to worry about a highly reflective surface. One speedlight on each side, diffused and positioned slightly in front of medal to feather the light.

All my tricks were used here so I could expose everything without really blowing out anything or creating hot spots. Was pleased with how this turned out.

Sometimes, it feels really good to just spend a few hours “playing” and honing your skills. Although I am pleased with how things turned out, I am not 100% confident in my abilities. I know there is still so much to learn and to discover. No matter how great one becomes at their craft, there are those out there that are better. That keeps me trying to get better and discover new techniques.

Until next time,

Mark