It's Sunday morning and I should be in church. I'll go tonight for sure.
Since I've ended up at home, I thought I'd show you a little picture which you may wonder about. Here it is: -
Well, the answer is that it's white on white. No big deal to a studio owner really, but let's think about it.
Problem: The background is white, and the bottle tops are also white. How do you stop them from merging together?
There are a few solutions, but I'll tell you mine.
First, the entire surroundings to the tray of chemicals is translucent white.
A diffused studio strobe is placed at about 45 degrees, 2 feet above the tray. A second strobe is placed behind the rear diffusion panel, facing the rear of the subject.
The output of the rear strobe causes the front of the rear bottles to be darker than the background. (Still with me?)
The high strobe then is set to expose the fronts/top of the bottles. This then creates a situation where the bottle tops once again start to merge into the background. Answer? A "flag."
The flag is a small piece of black card, (in this case anyway), held in the light path to block light from the strobe to a given area of the subject, in this case the bottle tops.
It's simple and it works. In this image it may not be as clear as in the much larger original, but all ribs and indentations of the bottle tops are retained in detail.
Yes, it's a lot of trouble to go to, but it's worth it!
Hope you enjoyed this, and can see other ways, (there are many), of achieving the same sort of result.
