photographing Glossy vessels
John Lucas
>This is for Mark and others who are interested. Shooting very glossy vessels can be quite difficult. Mostly because they show everything around them.
It started raining so I couldn't spend the time it would take to do it right but Hope you will get the idea. The first shot on the left is the bowling ball sitting in my 3 panel light booth. You can see the panels and the area behind the panels. The bottom of the ball is reflecting the gray which worked fairly well.
For the middle shot I tried to cover all the holes with white cloth including the area between the set and the camera. This will sometimes work for vessels that are light wood color but black or dark vessels just show the all the different panels and cloth. Sometimes if you shoot with a wide open aperture the panels will be out of focus enough to not be very noticeable. In this shot I used a fairly short lens and an aperture about F11 so the panels are pretty noticeable.
The last shot was simply the ball setting on the background with only cloudy skylight, no panels. You can see the sky and the trees around my yard. I used a moderate telephoto (about 180) with an aperture of f4.5. This threw the trees reflected in the ball out of focus. You can see the edges of my background reflected on the left and right. Ideally the background would be larger. This is probably what I would try for Mark's pieces. Change your angle so what you see reflected is the least objectionable.
Shooting this kind of piece in the studio is tough and requires a lot of gadgets and panels.