Glance at the summary firstThe summary from the end of the lesson, as a road map before you start reading.
Because shiny products show not the light but their surroundings, photographing them is designing a reflection environment: white and black surfaces, a card hiding the lens, and a strip light that tells the form with a single clean line. The boundary of transparent products is drawn as an edge line with black or white strips. A polarizing filter doesn't work on metal, and the shine on the skin holding the product is left to the ring by blotting its oil and taking the strip out of the angle of reflection.
Learning goal
You will be able to explain that a shiny product shows not the light but its surroundings: everything seen on the surface of a silver ring or a glass bottle is a surface standing across from it. That is why, instead of lighting the product, you will design the environment it will reflect, where to put the white and black surfaces. With a long, narrow strip light you will draw the form of a bottle or a metal surface with a single clean bright line. You will show the boundary of a transparent product as a dark or bright edge line with black or white strips placed behind it. You will know why a polarizing filter doesn't work on metal. You will mind the shine on the skin of a hand showing a ring on its finger, separately according to the skin's color.
The question
The jeweler neighbor puts a silver ring and a glass perfume bottle into the light tent at the end of the table. Looking through the viewfinder, your friend flinches. On every face of the ring are the tent's seams, the paper's curve and the dark circle of their own lens. In the bottle's glass is the LED panel's bright rectangle, and its edges have vanished into the white background; the bottle is half visible, like a ghost. Everything that worked for the bowls works the other way here. Why are bottles and jewelry so hard?
Context
While turning a reflector you found which direction light will bounce off a shiny surface from the equality of the angles of incidence and return (Lesson 18.3). You also saw how a rotated polarizing filter dims the glare of a lake or a shop window (Lesson 13.2). In the tabletop studio, you experienced the tent flattening the bowls' form as it wrapped them (Lesson U.3).
A matte or semi-matte product like a bowl scatters light in every direction; where the light comes from decides its lit side. A mirror, a silver ring or a glass bottle, on the other hand, doesn't scatter light but reflects it back: on its surface it shows the light itself and everything standing across from it. This lesson turns this difference into a method.
Simple explanation
What does a shiny surface show?
A reflection environment is the whole of the surfaces placed across from and around a shiny product that will appear on its surface. A shiny product shows not its own color but this environment's brightness. Silver facing a white surface looks bright and white, silver facing a black surface looks almost black. A surface facing nothing shows the inside of a dark room.
That is why with shiny products the question isn't "where will the light come from?" but "what will show on this surface?" The angle of reflection points the way. The line looking from the camera to a point on the product bounces off that point at the same angle and arrives somewhere; whatever stands there shows at that point. To prevent the lens's own reflection, a black or white board with a hole cut in the middle for the lens can be put in front of the camera. Unwanted lines such as the box's seams disappear by choosing plain, unbroken surfaces.
With jewelry, relying on a polarizing filter is a mistake. Because the glare of glass, varnish or water is made, in an angled view, of light vibrating in one direction, the filter can cut it. In the glare of silver and steel the light doesn't gain such a direction; however much you turn the filter, the reflection in the metal stays where it is.
What is a strip light for?
A strip light is a long, narrow light source with straight edges: it can be a narrow softbox, an LED bar, or a light tent wall narrowed with two black cards. When it reflects from the side in a cylindrical bottle or a round ring, it leaves a straight, clean bright line along the surface. This line tells the surface's form and curve; it shows a bottle's roundness, a ring's dome.
The strip's distance decides the line's thinness. A near strip leaves a wide, soft highlight; a far strip a thin, sharp line. A white strip on one side and a black board on the other give the product a bright and a dark edge and add volume. Instead of a few small, broken reflections, a single long, clean line makes a shiny product look more expensive and more orderly.
How is the boundary of a transparent product drawn?
An edge line is the dark or bright line that separates a transparent product's outer boundary from the background. A glass bottle is invisible on its own; it shows only through the light behind it bending at its edges. While the bottle is in front of a white background, if black strips are put on its two sides, just outside the framing, the glass's edges reflect and bend that black and the bottle is drawn with a thin, dark line. While the bottle is in front of a black background, if white strips are put behind and beside it, this time the edges show as bright white lines. Which one to choose depends on the product's language in the shop.
A hand holding a shiny product is a surface too, and it both scatters and shines light. On dark skin, because little light is scattered, specular highlights look more distinct relative to their surroundings: a strip light can leave bright spots on the knuckles and nails. On light skin the same shine catches the eye less, but the skin itself can turn gray in front of white reflectors. Blotting the skin's oil with a tissue, moving the strip a little farther away and turning the hand's angle slightly to take it out of the strip's angle of reflection leaves the shine not on the skin but on the ring.
Visual evidence
Your friend lifts off the tent and puts the ring on a piece of black velvet. On either side of it they place a white foam board, and in front of the camera a black card with a hole in the middle. Every face of the ring is now either white or black; the seams and the lens have vanished, the silver surface reads like a dome.
They bring the bottle in front of the white background. Narrowing an LED panel with two black cards, they make a strip light to the bottle's left; a thin, upright bright line runs along the glass. When they put narrow black cards on the bottle's two sides, just outside the framing, the glass's edges are drawn with a dark line and the bottle stops being a ghost. They try the polarizing filter: a faint reflection on the glass's front face lessens, but the shine in the ring's metal doesn't change at all.
The jeweler wants to show the ring on his own finger. A man with dark brown skin and thick fingers. In the first frame the strip light has left bright white spots on his knuckles and his nail, and the eye goes to them before the ring. Your friend asks him to wipe his hand with a tissue, moves the strip a little farther away and turns the hand a few degrees. In the new frame the shine is only on the ring; the skin dark, warm and matte, the knuckle lines picked out.
Common mistakes
Common mistakeShooting a shiny product like matte products, in a light tent or with a single lamp in front of it.
Seams, the lamp and the lens show on the surface. The fix: place plain white and black surfaces across from the product, hide the lens with a card with a hole.
Common mistakeTrying to erase a metal ring's reflection with a polarizing filter.
Because light reflected from metal isn't polarized, the reflection stays. The fix: change the environment that will be reflected.
Common mistakeLighting a transparent bottle in front of a white background only from the front.
Its edges are lost in the background. The fix: put black strips just outside the framing and set up a dark edge line.
Summary
Because shiny products show not the light but their surroundings, photographing them is designing a reflection environment: white and black surfaces, a card hiding the lens, and a strip light that tells the form with a single clean line. The boundary of transparent products is drawn as an edge line with black or white strips. A polarizing filter doesn't work on metal, and the shine on the skin holding the product is left to the ring by blotting its oil and taking the strip out of the angle of reflection.
Mini assignment
In this assignment you will photograph a metal and a glass product by setting up a reflection environment.
- Photograph a metal object at home, a spoon or a ring, first with a single lamp, then with white and black boards on either side and a card with a hole in the middle in front of the camera.
- Put a glass or a bottle in front of a white background; narrow a light with two cards to make a strip light, and set up a dark edge line by adding black strips at its edges.
- Photograph the metal object in a hand, with its owner's consent; if there are bright spots on the skin, reduce them with a tissue, the strip's distance and the hand's angle.
Check yourself
- Did an unwanted reflection, of your own lens or of the room, remain on the metal surface?
- Do the glass object's edges separate from the background?
- Is the shine in the hand in the frame on the skin, or only on the product?
Glossary
| Term | Short definition |
|---|---|
| Reflection environment | The whole of the surfaces placed across from and around a shiny product that will appear on its surface. |
| Strip light | A long, narrow light source with straight edges; it leaves a single clean bright line on shiny surfaces. |
| Edge line | The dark or bright line, formed with strips placed behind or beside it, that separates a transparent product's outer boundary from the background. |
Mini quiz
1. What does the brightness seen on a shiny silver surface depend on?
- A) The brightness of the surfaces standing across from the surface
- B) The silver's own color
- C) The camera's ISO value
- D) The aperture
2. How is the lens prevented from showing in a shiny product?
- A) By stopping down the aperture
- B) By putting a black or white card with a hole in the middle in front of the camera
- C) By raising the light
- D) By fitting a polarizing filter
3. How do the edges of a glass bottle in front of a white background become distinct?
- A) With a stronger light from the front
- B) By darkening the background
- C) By putting black strips on the bottle's two sides, just outside the framing
- D) By oiling the bottle
4. Why can't a polarizing filter erase a metal ring's reflection?
- A) Because the filter doesn't work on small objects
- B) Because the ring is very shiny
- C) Because silver absorbs light
- D) Because metal's glare doesn't carry a single direction of vibration
Answers
- A — A shiny surface doesn't scatter light; it shows back the white or black across from it.
- B — The card with a hole leaves on the surface the reflection of a plain surface instead of the lens.
- C — The glass's edges reflect and bend the black beside them and a thin dark line forms.
- D — The filter cuts light vibrating in one direction; metal's glare carries no such direction.
Summary card
- A shiny product shows not the light but its surroundings: design the reflection environment.
- The angle of reflection says what will show; hide the lens with a card with a hole.
- Strip light: a single, long, clean bright line; distance decides thinness.
- Glass: a black strip on a white background, a white strip on a black background, edge line.
- A polarizer doesn't work on metal; leave the shine on the skin to the ring.
Bridge to the next lesson
The ring and the bottle are now spotless on a white background. But the jeweler complains that the products on his page always stand in the same void: buyers want to see how the ring sits on a hand, what the bottle looks like on a morning table. Is putting the product into a story possible? The next lesson takes up how context and styling help sales, by placing the product in a place where it is used, in a morning, at a table.