Andriy Zolotoiy Photography Blog

These backgrounds usually look much cooler than white since you can create more dramatic light. But they are also much trickier to deal with. Black mirror surface normally stays black no matter how much light you throw at it but it gets lighter when you can see reflection of the light source in it. That’s why umbrellas are not normally used for this kind of photography, you will need good rectangular softbox with not-wrinkled screen.

For this Bugatti frame I positioned softbox horizontally angled approximately 45 degrees relative to lens axis to create visible transition line from black to grey.

Here I used black velvet to remove any reflections from background. A lot of negative space is left for additional text to be put in.

This pictures was taken on black mirror with black foam board at the back. One light with red gel was positioned below the table and aimed high to light back panel and reflect in the mirror.

Jewelry is probably one of the hardest things to photograph. If you don’t light stones properly they would look completely dead and this Tag Heuer L-type frame coincidentally had a whole set of small rubies on side. This shield of rubies is main point of interest of this frame, and I used purple gel as background for this shot to compliment gemstones color. I lit frame from above with the softbox, and I used another light with 7” reflector and 10° grid to bring rubies to life.

When I was shooting last glasses gig I had almost complete freedom with background selection for particular frames. Sometimes you can see immediately which frame would work with which background, but sometimes it’s just trial and error. For example, I first tried this Bugatti frame on black but it didn’t reveal this cool stripy structure within translucent frame so I had to go with backlit white background to shine light through:

Another neat trick when working with backlit background is that you can make glasses “float” in the air by placing them upside down and shooting from fairly high position. Then, when you flip the image you get some nice looking scene with zero Photoshop involvement:

Completely transparent frame is another candidate for white backlit background. Large softbox is still needed on the top/front to reveal opaque details.

To produce shadows you need small hard light source preferably with grid to avoid overexposing essential details. I normally use 10 degree grid for this and place strobe about 6-7 feet away to get this effect.

Just finished photographing set of sunglasses for an optical store here in Toronto. Glass frames are tricky to deal with, some of them are shiny and reflective, some matte and textured, and all have a pair of curved lenses stuck in them that reflect everything around. Client wanted to have creative shots, not just simple product images which added the task of creating some kind of theme without overusing props. Over next couple of posts I’ll share some setups I came up with that worked very well.

If you are looking for complete digital workflow for your photography business that will cost you something close to $0 and you’re using Lightroom to manage photos then you’re in luck. Complete image turnaround consists of sending a set of images from LR to website where client can pick the best ones, then client’s selection is emailed to you. This selection is then marked in LR so you can work on selected images.

This is two part process.
First part is to generate web gallery where client can rate photos, and TTG Client Response Gallery does exactly that. You export images straight from LR to the website and then receive email with the list of selects.
Second part is to bring that selection back into LR. For this purpose you can use my Client Selects plug-in which will load that list you received in email and mark images by star rating and/or color label.
Simple, cheap and will save you lots of time.

Update: ClientSelects v. 1.4.1.0 is now available.