Quick Tips for Photographing Glass

Photography Tips

Photographing reflective surfaces can be a nightmare, or not, depending on how you set up your lights. David Bergman demonstrates how to light glass:

Avoid firing a flash straight at the wine glass.

Direct Flash

Direct flash results in reflections from the flash in the glass.

The solution is to place the light behind the glass.

Place your light behind the glass.

A big softbox works well for lighting glass from behind. But you can also bounce your flash off of a white reflector or white piece of paper.

Backlighting

With a completely white background, it’s hard to define the edges of the glass. You can use negative fill to darken the edges.

Use black foam core to define glass edges.

To accentuate the edges of the glass, use black foam core or anything dark to surround your subject.

Without negative fill

Negative fill helps to define glass edges.

To reverse the look, place the black foam core in front of the white background so that the light slips out from the sides.

This creates a beautiful rim lighting effect.

What do you think of this tutorial? Share with us your thoughts in the comments below.