How to take white flower in glass vase in white background?

megahw · Jul 15, 2008

How to take white flowers in a glass vase with a perfect white background for website use - something like this:

http://www.mitbbs.com/article2/PhotoGear/31247085_414.jpg

Thank you very much!

christopher walrath · Jul 15, 2008

That must be Japanese for 'These are supposed to be white flowers'.

My first thought for something different would be blow out the background and diffuse light on the flowers and vase and expose for the flowers.

reg · Jul 16, 2008

My first thought would be to take white flowers in a glass vase with a perfect black background.

Seems like it would just be far easier, IF an option. I'm guessing that it's not so much the white background that's important but the professional look of the photo with ANY perfect background.

Robin · Jul 16, 2008

Link isn't working. You need black paper on each side to help bring out the glass. Like this: http://www.tabletopstudio.com/documents/glass_photography.htm

Scroll down to "photography waterford crystal on light backgrounds" - there's an example of how the black paper is used to bring out definition in the glass and seperate it from the background.

prodigy2k7 · Jul 16, 2008

how to take it? reach ur hand out and grasp it and pick it up!

Zansho · Jul 16, 2008

There are a couple of ways to approach this, and this is really going to be limited by whatever equipment you may have at your disposal.

I'd light the background separately from your subject, using perhaps some white roll paper or something similar. Two Flashguns should work just fine. Your backdrop should be lit one stop more powerful than your subject's light source.

Place your subject far enough away from the background, so that it doesn't put on shadows on your white backdrop. Now, meter your subject's light source (flashgun, strobe, whatever). For this example, let's say that your subject's light source meters at F8.

Hence, like I said before, your background's light should be around F11, F11.5, being one stop more powerful than your subject's light source.

I also agree with getting a couple of black cards for each side of the glass, to help give the glass more separation from the white background.

Good luck!

epatsellis · Jul 16, 2008

were it I shooting, I'd:

1. Use a shooting table, with the plexi lit to get a nice soft gradient from about 1/3 of the way from the bottom to the top, light at the bottom, darker as you go up.

2. Use a stripbox (I use a 28x72 Elinchrom) as a primary light, modeling one side of the vase.

3. Use a long thin fill card to add a second highlight opposite 1-1/2 stops down.

4. Darken the entire area and look carefully for misplaced reflections. especially from the camera, if you have a longer lens (equiv to about a 200-300 @35mm, I use a 480mm with a digital scan back on a 4x5 camera for this type of work personally)

Many people find the book "Light: Science and Magic" to be boring , but there are a lot of fundamental principles that are covered, and lighting glass is one of the trickiest subjects you can find. It takes a lot of knowledge and experience (or just really lucky) to shoot it well.

erie