Lab Glassware

[Manfred M]

Another small project experimenting with transparent subjects, mostly glassware one might find in a chemistry lab.

I picked up some cheap beakers and Erlenmeyer flasks from Amazon to experiment with. Bottom line is the cheap glassware is quite thick and causes all kinds of issues with internal reflections. The flasks had to be shot empty, because when filled with water, they became quite dark, likely from the black acrylic base they were sitting on.

[royent]

Manfred I find this very busy and I'm not keen on the way that the reflections bleed off at the bottom
Roy

[Shropshire Lad]

Manfred I find compositionally this is weighted a bit too far to the left for me and I agree with Peter about the busyness. I do like the way you have the sphere with the reflection at the bottom left. It creates a very interesting optical illusion where it seems to hang below the level of the surface that the rest of the glassware is sitting on. Maybe you could explore this further in your future work.

Nice job on avoiding any specular highlights. Was the setup for this shot similar to the way you were shooting the fruit you posted last month?

[Manfred M]

Thanks Roy and Luke - I'm starting an 8-week long course on still life photography, so I thought I would start lining up some ideas for the course work. I'm not 100% happy with it and am looking at ways to improve it.

Roy - it's a still life and is meant to be busy. In the past some of my still life work has been criticized for being too simple. The reflections are on purpose and the image is quite boring without them.

Luke - I agree with the balance issue and can at least partially compensate by removing the stopper, which reduces the amount of negative space on the right hand side. The sphere is actually a semi-sphere, so that's how I get that effect.

There are no specular highlights as the scene is back-lit. I have two coloured lights aimed at the back of a translucent white sheet of acrylic as the light source; that's how I get the gradient. No, this is not the technique I used for the food photography, but is almost identical to this image I did about a week ago.

More backlit glasswear