Bohemian hand made wine glasses

[Manfred M]

After I shot the wine glass I posted in response to Haseeb's thread on shooting glass, I shot a couple more hand-made Bohemian wine glasses we picked up when we were in Prague a number of years ago.












I'm not up to Mike's and Daniel's standard (yet) but I might get there with a bit of hard work on my part!

[Mike Buckley]

I hope you serve these glasses at the dinner table, as I really like that they are similar enough to work as a set though dissimilar enough to be individually distinctive.

I like wine glasses ornamented with color to look at them but generally not to drink wine from them. That's because the color of the glass usually obscures the color of the wine. Not so in your second wine glass, which limits the color almost entirely to the stem and base.

The perspective of your last two images work better for me because the front and rear of the top rims are more evident. That helps to define the shape of the glass.

Your lighting at least in the second one is obscuring the etching in the middle of the clear part of the glass. It would be ideal if you could get that area to stand out the way it does closer to the sides of the glass, which may be possible to do with post-processing.

I'm not up to Mike's...standard yet/

Not at all true but thanks for the compliment!

When we were in Lofoten, Norway, we went to a great glass-blowing place. Unfortunately, they had no wine glasses available. They had lots of carafes available but they were very heavy (we were close to our limit of suitcase weight for the airplanes) and not in a style that would work with the other things in our home.

[Kodiak]

Hey Manfred,

If I was to use the same lighting techniques repetitively but on different
compositions, the later would have to achieve an increasingly higher level
of sophistication and even more intricacy in order not to bore the viewer
with what would appear, in a very short time, to be a collection of catalogue
shots.

Be bold, explore other techniques, other methods. What counts is not the glass
but the light that's falling on it!

[Mike Buckley]

not to bore the viewer with what would appear, in a very short time, to be a collection of catalogue
shots. Be bold, explore other techniques, other methods. What counts is not the glass but the light that's falling on it!

Good points.

It's also the light falling on the background and the background being used. Using an evenly lit white tabletop and background makes it especially easy for people to think of an image as a catalog shot, especially in these days of seeing them displayed on a website that matches the white color of the image with the white background of the web page.

If the lighting of the subject itself remains the same but the tabletop and background and the transition between them varies, the viewers' perceptions about that will also vary.

[Shadowman]

Each has its own quality, I like the brilliant blues in the second image.

[Manfred M]

Thanks Mike and Daniel

First of all; I haven't shot glass in about 3 years and am using completely different equipment (camera, lights, etc.) so this is my first stop. I'm trying to master getting the edges looking good before I start getting into more complex shots, and I am not happy with the results yet. I try to shoot as simply as possible; starting with a single light and a simple setup, and once I understand what that is doing for me, I move on to the next step.

All three shots were taken with exactly the same setup. Neither the lights nor the exposure were changed, and unlike Daniel, these are not SOOC; the sensor dust on the image would have prevented me doing that. Mike, part of the exercise was to see how the lip looked (all three glasses are not identical in height), the first one is tallest and the middle one is shortest.

Mike - I'm struggling to fix the loss of detail; which is most obvious on the middle glass, but I'm fighting with the same issue on the first one as well; but the colour and etching hide it to some extent. I think I need to find a fix with lighting, as the various approaches in post did not work (dodging and a gradient with an overlay blending mode).

Once I get the glass looking right, I was hoping to hit the glass from the rear (or front) and side with either a grid spot or a snoot to try to throw a bit of a shadow on the base, so that they don't look like they are floating.

Let the games continue...

[Mike Buckley]

Let the games continue...

Indeed. So long as they are games, they'll be lots of fun!

You mentioned that the etching and color at least contribute to the loss of detail. Ironically, if you do bring out the detail you might not like it in these compositions and these subjects. That's because you would be displaying the detail on both the rear and front sides of the wine glass. That explains why almost all of my photos of transparent, etched glass (I just now checked them out) show only the forward or rear part of the glass, not both.

One way to bring out the detail in the middle of the glass when using a white background is to place a light behind translucent material shining toward the subject and glass. There are other ways I've read about but that's the way I'm most comfortable with because that's the only way I have used.

[Manfred M]

Indeed. So long as they are games, they'll be lots of fun!

You mentioned that the etching and color at least contribute to the loss of detail. Ironically, if you do bring out the detail you might not like it in these compositions and these subjects. That's because you would be displaying the detail on both the rear and front sides of the wine glass. That explains why almost all of my photos of transparent, etched glass (I just now checked them out) show only the forward or rear part of the glass, not both.

One way to bring out the detail in the middle of the glass when using a white background is to place a light behind translucent material shining toward the subject and glass. There are other ways I've read about but that's the way I'm most comfortable with because that's the only way I have used.

Understood Mike; now that I've played around with top lighting, I'm trying one of two other methods. The first is to drive the light against the back surface to make it your light source and the results are not all that different than the top light except that it introduces a shadow. For the translucent light source, I'm going to try my medium or small softbox turned way down and use that as the background.

The last lime I tried shooting glass, I used small v-flats; black and white respectively, depending on whether I was shooting on a white of black background. Those got thrown out some time ago.

[Manfred M]

Be bold, explore other techniques, other methods. What counts is not the glass
but the light that's falling on it!

Okay, taking your advice....





Most of the light comes from a snoot aimed at the foot of the glass. Same white seamless, but the inverse square law lets me turn it gray.

[Kodiak]

Zum Teufel! …so'was! Now you're talking!
Could you find a way to give the cup the same luminosity the ball has?
Jetzt wird ernst!

[Kaye Leggett]

Okay, taking your advice....





Most of the light comes from a snoot aimed at the foot of the glass. Same white seamless, but the inverse square law lets me turn it gray.

Wow what a transformation - but is it Bohemian enough ? If you're playing games, then 'a' definition of Bohemian is 'a person, as an artist or writer, who lives and acts free of regard for conventional rules and practices' so I wonder how you can get a glass image to do that ?

[Manfred M]

•
Zum Teufel! …so'was! Now you're talking!
Could you find a way to give the cup the same luminosity the ball has?
Jetzt wird ernst!

Das kann ich vielleicht heute Abend probieren. Although I suspect your German is a lot better than mine; I don't get a chance to practice all that often.

Actually this shot was an accident. I was metering my lighting ratios and had disabled the key light and forgot to enable it when I took the shot and found that it was rather interesting looking.

Time to pick up a sensor cleaning kit first; I handn't realized how dirty it is until I took this shot.

[Manfred M]

Wow what a transformation - but is it Bohemian enough ? If you're playing games, then 'a' definition of Bohemian is 'a person, as an artist or writer, who lives and acts free of regard for conventional rules and practices' so I wonder how you can get a glass image to do that ?

Not playing games at all Kaye; Bohemia (the western part of today's Czech Republic; whose capital is Prague) is a historical centre of high quality glass manufacture. So it can be viewed as "Bohemian" in terms of its origin and as well as the fact that it followed us home to Canada...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemian_glass

[Mike Buckley]

Terrific change! I've done better with my mistakes than with my plans, so I understand how this photo can come about. I sure would like to see the background (and perhaps the tabletop) in a gradient that goes from light blue at the bottom to midnight blue at the top.

[Manfred M]

I sure would like to see the background (and perhaps the tabletop) in a gradient that goes from light blue at the bottom to midnight blue at the top.

The real question I have here is should I try to do this in-camera by gelling the lights (CTB gels, which I do have) or do I just do it in post?

To get the colour range you suggest purely through lighting is going to be challenging, so right now I am leaning to doing it in post, although I might want to look at a combination approach of using coloured gels and managing fine tuning in post.

[Mike Buckley]

I always take the easiest path that yields the desired results. One reason I thought of the idea is because I have some background paper that has a very nice blue gradient printed on it, though I don't remember how light or dark the extreme tones are. I've never used it and this is the sort of project for which I bought it (on the very, very cheap, about 90% off).

[Kodiak]

The real question I have here is should I try to do this in-camera by gelling the lights (CTB gels, which I do have) or do I just do it in post?

It is not that I want you to hate me but…

I had the chance to underline it already: I'M A SOOC FREAK! This is like the
first days on the skating rink: the sooner one stops walking, the better the
striding! It will take some time and effort but it gets quicker as experience
builds in.

Painters don't have this challenge… they are in PP all the time!

[Kodiak]

Actually this shot was an accident.

NO WAY!
The correct expression for this is: "creative mishap!" ;-)

[Mike Buckley]

Painters don't have this challenge… they are in PP all the time!

I like that!

[Manfred M]

Kodiak – Your SOOC work is brilliant; you certainly know your tools and techniques very well. I applaud you for “getting it right in the camera” and frankly I am re-examining my approaches to photography. Quite frankly, I have always shot jpeg, but have gone jpeg + RAW over the past few years. My “casual” shots go straight from camera to screen, but my “serious” shots do go through post processing.

I think that the SOOC argument, or perhaps the minimalist approach when it comes to processing has been with us forever. I definitely remember time when the “purists” that would print the entire negative, including the borders and perforations in 35mm film to “prove” their shots were uncropped. The ultra-purists would print on nothing other than #2 paper; no burning, dodging or tilting of easels allowed during the printing process.

When I look at the work of two photographers whose work I greatly admire; Adams and Karsh, both were well known for fiddling with the negative, right through to the final print. Adams did all his own work, and Karsh employed both a negative retoucher and a printer. I know this latter fact because the professional photographer that mentored me during my early days in serious photography, was trained by Karsh’s negative retoucher.

While I applaud your work and creativity, I find that the SOOC argument is far weaker in the digital world than it was in the film days (and even there, I found the arguments somewhat weak). If we look at a modern digital camera as what it really is, a computer that takes pictures and the jpegs that it produces as being the result of what a computer programmer in Tokyo or Osaka determined it should be, the SOOC takes a totally different view. Are tweaks off the default settings still considered SOOC and if so, why is this better or worse that making these decisions in a tool like Photoshop?

When working in the darkroom, the negative I held was the “best” data I had to work with, regardless of any decisions I made in producing the final print. When I look at a jpeg, I can’t say the same thing; my camera, at base ISO captures an image with over 14 stops of dynamic range at a bit depth of 14-bits per channel; ie. 42-bit data. When I output to a jpeg I throw most of that data away (4.3x10^12) and retain only 8-bits per channel (24-bits of data) (16.8x10^6), which means one will have thrown away 99.9996% of the data that the camera captured. Not only was that, but the decision on what to keep and what to throw away, made by a programmer who has no idea as to what I actually captured. While no one will argue that you will need all of that data to create an image; I would argue that a SOOC jpeg is not likely the best image that could have been created from all that data.

So while I like and respect what you do SOOC, I’m not sure I agree with the logic behind your creative choices. That being said I am examining the way I approach my photographs, and that in itself is a good thing.

Thanks for getting me to think about my approaches.