The Crafts Report - Leading the Crafts Industry for 35 years

Spotlighting can add a touch of drama to your images, but it doesn’t work with all types of crafts. This lighting technique can easily be used with matte and flat-surfaced work, while shiny surfaces can be nightmares to get just right.

Let’s start by looking at how to create a circle of light in the darkness; the simplest way is to use a snoot over the light’s reflector housing. The snoot is simply a tapered metal cone that fits over the light and creates a small circle of light instead of a large area of diffused light. With your object on a black background, the circle of light will appear as a light gray area without well-defined edges. For a tighter circle with a better defined edge, you need to use a spotlight (a light source with some sort of lens in front that focuses the light into a better circle). You can get all sorts of spotlights, and for small jewelry pieces I’ve found that you can successfully use focused halogen table lamps for this effect.

Both a snoot and a spotlight produce harsh, hard light. This type of light works well with matte surfaces but is not the kind of light to use with shiny or metallic finishes. The spotlight produces hard, bright glare spot—essentially ruining your image.

Additionally, these highly directional spotlights create deep shadows that record without details. To soften these, you need to bounce light into them. You can do this several ways. One simple option is placing white cardboard “reflectors” around the object, just outside the picture frame. Or you can crank up the “ambient” light level by adding a second light bounced off of an umbrella aimed at the subject. Move the second light until you can clearly see the circle of light against the background. Move it until the background quite a bit darker than the circle of light.

Other methods of creating a circle of light are more complex. They require a lot of adjusting and fussing but produce lovely results. One of these more tedious methods requires using a large panel of translucent white acrylic or a “shooting” table with an acrylic surface. Support the panel about 30 inches or so above the floor (with a shooting table, the surface is already at this height). Next, place your work in the center of the panel or table. Place the spotlight or “snoot” light under the table. Warning: Never place tungsten lights directly on the floor—they get very hot. The safest way to use one of these lights is to attach it to light stand legs or a small tripod. Make sure that the light (or the end of the snoot) is as far from the acrylic as possible. Turn the light off often to give it—and the panel—a chance to cool off.

Adjust the diameter of the circle by moving the light up and down. Since this is an under light, it creates a circle of light without illuminating the work—you’ll still need to light the work from above. The trick then is to set up this light or lights so that the work is well-lit but the circle of light is not washed out.

Another, perhaps simpler way to create a circle of light is to place your work on a dark, shiny surface. For the photo at ____, I used a piece of ¼-inch-thick black acrylic as my background. I set the acrylic background on a table and inclined it toward the camera at a slight angle. I used a spotlight, but a snoot on the reflector housing would have worked just as well. I pointed the light toward the ceiling so the circle of light would be reflected on the acrylic panel. I placed the necklace on the acrylic and focused the camera on it. Then I turned on the spotlight and turned off the room lights. Looking through the viewfinder, I watched the position of the reflected circle of light on the acrylic surface. I moved the light until the light projected on the ceiling was just over the necklace. Then, while looking through the camera viewfinder, I moved the camera until I was sure that the reflection of the circle of light on the ceiling surrounded the area I wanted illuminated.

Notice that in the photo I positioned the light so that only a section of the necklace was lit. I did this by changing the height of the light stand. Raising the light toward the ceiling made the circle smaller. On the other hand, moving the light away from the ceiling made the circle bigger (completely surrounding the piece with light). For this piece I felt the smaller circle was more dramatic and worked best.

Because this light is bounced off a smooth white surface, it is very soft and will work well with both matte surfaces and most glossy surfaces. Polished or mirrored surfaces with still show glare, but otherwise most glazed or shiny metals will look great.

If you are lighting a piece the way I lit the necklace, you need to pay attention to the difference in the intensity within and outside of the circle of light. If the difference is more than two stops, the area outside the circle of light will be too dark. As with the spotlight, you can increase the ambient light level to lighten the “uncircled” areas.

Wood is funny stuff. While it would seem easy to photograph, it is actually rather tricky. Wooden crafts are all over the map when it comes to contrast, tone and shape. In fact, the starting place to decide how to light a wooden object is to look at its shape and surface.

To make sense of the variety of wooden objects, let’s create a few general categories and describe how to photograph each:

1. Tall, thin objects (vases)

2. Squat, round objects (bowls and plates)

3. Squat, angular objects (boxes)

4. Miscellaneous objects (toys, etc.)

Remember that within each category there is a range of surface qualities ranging from flat to shiny.

The shape of an object defines how we will place the lights, and the surface characteristics tell us about the quality of light to use.

Let’s start with tall, thin objects. Tall pieces are easily lit with a single light placed over the object. I like to shoot these wooden objects with a softbox or umbrella over my main light. Although both devices soften the light, each creates some shadowing—important to emphasize texture. Photo umbrellas are just that—umbrellas—and generally are made of translucent white material that both reflects light and transmits some of the light through it. A softbox is a diffusing device that is placed over a light with a mounting bracket and softens the light as it passes through translucent white fabric.

For tall, thin objects like vases or sculptures, place the light over the object as shown at ____. The illustration shows the setup for a large piece sitting on the floor. The light in the softbox can either be on a stand or on a boom attached to a stand. For smaller pieces, you can set up the background on a tabletop and use the same lighting arrangement.

Suspend the softbox light above the subject at a distance two to three times the object’s height. That would be two to three feet over a one foot tall piece.

Squat (or even tallish) pieces present a problem for a single overhead light. That is, the undersides of the piece are in shadow and lose detail and color. There are several ways to fix this problem, the simplest being to move the overhead light back toward the camera and tilt the softbox toward the work. This will throw the light more uniformly on the top and bottom parts of the piece. Another simple approach is to place large white pasteboards on either side of the work to bounce light into the shadow areas (this method works best with pieces that have flatter surfaces).

With squat pieces, though, I generally prefer to change the lighting arrangement. Instead of using a softbox, I switch to two lights bounced off of umbrellas. I place them on either side of the work and adjust them to fully illuminate the work.

As far as backgrounds go, a white or graduated background is generally a good way to bounce some light onto the lower portion of a work. However, when the underside of the piece is, for example, glossy dark wood, rather than lightening shadows, the background will reflect onto the work’s surface. This will wash out both the surface and the color. If this occurs with a graduated background, try reshooting with the object placed closer to the middle of the background on a light gray area.

Wooden boxes can be shot like other squat objects (even if the box is tall) with two lights and umbrellas. However, the positioning of the box is very important because boxes are generally four-sided and a photograph can only show two sides and the top. You have to decide what the most significant part of the box is and then arrange the box to clearly show it.

To start, place the box on the background with one corner pointing toward the camera (a three-quarter view). Next, if one side is more interesting than the other, rotate the box so that this side appears larger through the viewfinder. If the top of the box is its strength, raise or lower the camera position to find the best view.

This reminds me of a particular problem I’ve encountered when photographing boxes. With wonderfully crafted boxes, there is often no visual clue as to what they are. Yes, you can tell it’s a box, but you are left without any idea of how it opens or if there are any special features. For example, I once had to photograph a beautiful box whose drawers fit into the box so well that they were almost invisible when closed. In this situation, give the viewer clues about what they are seeing—open a drawer a little or lift the top a bit.

Also with boxes (or a wooden piece with incised areas), try moving the light stand on the right farther away from the piece. This will increase the depth of the shadows produced by the left light as well as emphasize texture. This unequal lighting is also the light arrangement to use when shooting toys, whirligigs and other three-dimensional pieces.

Another common problem when shooting highly polished word (especially dark tones) is glare. Dark, polished surfaces act like mirrors—reflecting the lights and producing hot spots on the piece’s surface. Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy solution to this problem. First, diffuse the light with umbrellas. If this doesn’t work, you may need to use a light tent. Softening the light makes it seem to come from a very broad area. A light tent creates a “box” of light with the sides of the tent being large, diffused light sources.

But, sometimes even a light tent may not be sufficient. In one extreme case, I put my midsize light tent inside of one of my very large light tents—this double diffusion did the job. The downside was that the light was not only softened, but also reduced in intensity. The two-tent method cost six f/stops of light, which meant that instead of shooting at f/16 at 1/8th second, I ended up at an exposure time of 4 seconds.

There’s nothing as dull as a jury submission image of an unlit candle or lamp. A turned-off light doesn’t impress jurors or Web buyers. Realistically, craftwork that involves lighting sources (objects like candlesticks, candelabras, lanterns, table lamps, etc.) is often difficult to photograph. If you create work that lights up, this column is aimed at you.

It has been an amazing year for photography. While film will still be the media of choice for some, digital photography will open up all sorts of possibilities for artists. Just look at the Internet and the opportunities it offers for artists. Through it, they can reach a global marketplace and share their experiences and knowledge with other artists. With this year winding to a close, let me review some of the things I’ve explained over the year and expand on a few others.

I suppose digital photography will be perfected about the same time as flying cars hit the skies. Somehow, despite onboard computers that could drive a starship, folks are still having trouble getting really good photos. Rather then bemoaning an industry that put features over performance, let me focus on how to troubleshoot some of the most common problems people have with their digital photos.