Wine Lover's Jigsaw Puzzle

[Mike Buckley]

This is my wife's second jigsaw puzzle, which firmly establishes her undertaking as a hobby. As with her first puzzle, we documented in this one the very last piece to be placed in it.

I'm not posting this because I think it's a great photo. Instead, I'm posting it as a reminder that though it's very easy to light the puzzle to eliminate the glare on the flat part of the pieces, it's extraordinarily difficult at least for me to eliminate all of the glare on the joints between the pieces even during post-processing. As you can see, I haven't been entirely successful.

When I photographed her first jigsaw puzzle, I handheld the camera with arms fully extended over the puzzle. This time I added three small items to my arsenal of studio equipment. When joined together as one unit, they allowed me to hang the camera from a boom.

[pnodrog]

If you can get photoshop to do a content aware fill of the barrels please advise exactly how you managed it. To me it looks as if it is not quite finished but don't worry it happens to the best of us.

Soft even lighting (lightbox) and a polarising filter may help reduce the very small amount of glare that remains but as it is the glare does not worry me and after a few more drinks it would be perfect.

[Mike Buckley]

to me it looks as if it is not quite finished but don't worry it happens to the best of us.

[Bobobird]

Shoot each piece individually and stitch...

Now I have had too much to drink.

[Mike Buckley]

Now I have had too much to drink.

I think the problem is that you haven't had enough to drink.

[Ken Curtis]

Mike, you did quite well with many of the pieces.

I don't know if this would work or not, but did you try using a polarizer?

[Mike Buckley]

I didn't use a polarizer and that is for a couple of reasons. The camera was at least 12 inches away from me hanging on the boom. That made it difficult to review the image in the LCD, which would have also made it difficult to rotate the polarizer to the best position.

Even if I had been able to accurately asses the ideal position of the polarizer, there are so many joints made of curved surfaces that it would have been physically impossible to eliminate all of the reflections. (Using a polarizer to eliminate reflection of the sky on a curved hood of a car presents the same problem; no matter where the polarizer is positioned, only certain parts of the curved hood will be affected.) Indeed, if a polarizer would have eliminated all of the reflections, I would have been able to accomplish that goal by controlling the position of the light sources.

[Mike Buckley]

By the way, I used a polarizer photographing this jigsaw puzzle. As you can see, not all of the joints were affected for the reasons explained in my previous post.

[Bobobird]

I think the problem is that you haven't had enough to drink.

Probably.... Have to test that theory.

If you can't beat them, then join them!

That theory could apply by using the reflections to advantage?