Best way to photograhy candy?

[stone_family3]

Anyone done this? I'm mainly focusing on penny candy that has that a shiny coating and could possibly get a glare on it.

 

[rufus5150]

When it comes to shooting food, specular highlights can be your friend (for instance, judicious use of specular highlights can make a steak look incredibly juicy, or berries fresh and shiny).

There are two main ways to eliminate specular highlights.

The first is to completely cover the family of angles for your subject with light (worth a google there, also explained thoroughly in the book Light, Science and Magic). With candies, though, you'll tend to have a lot of rounded surfaces which can make said family of angles a bit daunting to cover.

By understanding that the 'glare' is caused by light bouncing directly off of the surface of the subject and straight into the lens, you can reduce and or eliminate much of it by using a polarizer, either on the light itself or on the camera lens (the latter probably being the best alternative). It won't work in all cases depending on the position of the light, but it is something to try. It also won't completely eliminate them, but merely reduce them in most cases. (You can see in the first images on this page: Understanding Polarizing Filters: Reduce Glare, Improve Colors ? Road Less Travelled Blog -- beyond the other obvious effects, the size of the glare from the sun is vastly reduce but not completely eliminated.)