Still life wine glass. C&C appreciated

[picsfrommt]

Okay, might as well give this posting thing a try…

I wanted to play around with capturing reflections so I grabbed a wine glass and some glass blobs my wife had laying around. I shot it in a custom light box in my studio, in other words, a cut up card board box sitting on the kitchen table. For illumination I had the ceiling light and one lamp on the right hand side of the box.

It was shot with a Canon T4i with the 18-55 zoom at ~53mm, F11, 0.3 second exposure. I post processed it with Aperture with the following changes

1. Bumped up the exposure
2. Really wacked out the color balance to get the lavender tone.
3. Cropped it to convert the orientation to portrait
4. Increased the black point and brightness.
5. Decreased the saturation and vibrancy.
6. Increased the mid-constrast.

Through lavender colored glasses, er, glass. by picsfrommt, on Flickr

[geoz]

Hi Craig,

I like it, especially the color and composition. I think you achieved what you were looking for. The only suggestions are to remove the white spot near the rim and lighten the dark spot on the right to bring it closer to the other tones. Also I'm not sure about the two white lines on the upper left.

George

[Mike Buckley]

This image proves that making a creative image does not require using a lot of expensive equipment. Well done!

In addition to the stuff that George mentioned, I would like to see more definition in the rear of the base of the glass and I would also like the bright vertical light in the base to be eliminated.

One last thought: Notice that the front rim of the glass hides the rear rim. If you use a perspective that allows both rims to show, you'll increase the third-dimensional appearance. The pieces that are inside the glass and the base of the glass help with that, but it seems to be a contradiction to me that the rim of the glass is only two-dimensional. I've made a number of photos of wine glasses and I feel the same way about the few that I've made when the top rim hides the rear rim.

[ShaneS]

Craig,

This is a nice image and a very good first attempt IMHO.

I haven't had a try at glass yet (I am intimidated by Mike's shots! ) However, I did try my hand at some still life photography with a couple of desk lamps this weekend still life photography with a couple of desk lamps this weekend. As Mike says:

This image proves that making a creative image does not require using a lot of expensive equipment.

It's a great way to take our photography hobby indoors when the elements are not conducive to heading outdoors.

I will look forward to seeing more of your shots and hope that I can learn something from your experiments.

[picsfrommt]

Thanks for the comments.

The one about the 2-D rim makes a lot of sense. It's one of those things that's obvious once somebody points it out. I'll raise the tripod a bit more next time.

The other comments, the ones about the bright spots, I'll try to address with a some post processing in this shot. I think I had a light turned on behind me. That may have been the source of that bright spot on the rim. Not really sure. Next time I'll look.

The light box I made was pretty close to the one described in http://www.wikihow.com/Create-an-Ine...raphy-Lightbox