Focus On Lighting Photos Focus on the Fundamentals.pdf

Dark-field lighting
Dark-field lighting is where
there is a dark background and
therefore glass needs bright lines
to outline the shape of the glass
with no other distracting light at
any other point. These bright outlines
tell us where the glass starts
and stops.
The good news is you don’t need
a lot of lights, nor even big ones,
to make good photographs of
glass. Well, actually you do need
at least one large light, but by now
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<strong>Focus</strong> <strong>On</strong> <strong>Lighting</strong> <strong>Photos</strong>
you know you can create a big
light out of your off-camera flash!
Place your main light (your offcamera
flash) behind and above
the glass. You can either aim the
off-camera flash at a white wall
behind the glass or point the light
toward the glass but with a diffusion
sheet between the flash and
the glass. Either way, you now
have a large light source, critical
to doing this type of photograph.
Next place a dark card (gobo)
between the main light and the
glass. This card needs to be
smaller than the light source. If
you are shooting at the white wall,
you can clamp the card behind
the light to a light stand. If you
are shooting through diffusion,
you can attach the board to the
diffusion material directly, or again
clamp it to a light stand. (If you
don’t have an extra light stand, you
could hang the card from above
with string.) The exact size of the
black background isn’t critical. It
simply has to be small enough that
sufficient light gets around it.
Glass on black Plexiglas with black
seamless behind the glass. This
image was lit by using undiffused
off-camera flash (camera right) and
undiffused in-camera flash as fill.
Not very good, is it?