Overcoming Challenges of Shiny Objects

ome artists can plop their work down on a background, turn on a floodlight and shoot jury slides without breaking a sweat. For other artists, photography can be a journey through photo hell.

Let’s look at one of the tough cases — photographing silver or any highly polished surface like other metals, glazed pottery, and highly varnished woods.

What makes silver so difficult to photograph? First, it isn’t really a color; second, its shiny surface acts as a mirror; and third, if the silver surface is curved, it becomes a convex mirror that will reflect an entire room.

And, if that wasn’t enough, some artists add other elements to their silver work such as dark stones or other shiny materials.

Reflective surfaces need light diffusion

To successfully photograph Carl and Lynn Buehler’s silver and gemstone bracelet required the use of some inexpensive accessories and a few photography tips.

The standard method for photographing highly reflective surfaces is to diffuse or soften the light as much as possible and to provide large white surfaces to be reflected by the materials’ surfaces.

I have mentioned previously the CloudDome, a plastic half dome that you place over an object to provide a smooth, overcast “sky” over the work. I also provided plans for making an airplane-hanger-shaped “light tent” out of cutable fluorescent light panels called Queenlite (available at Home Depot and other similar suppliers). These devices diffuse the light and hide the lighting and studio elements.

To shoot something like the silver and gemstone bracelet by Carl and Lynn Buehler of Plantation, Fla., I start by placing a background, in this case a graduated gray paper, in the light tent. Then I place the bracelet in the tent and point two photo floodlights at the tent.

There are many levels of diffusion that can be achieved with a light tent. The rule is that the farther the lights are from the tent the more diffused the light will be. For a highly polished surface, I move the lights back so that if I look at the light through the tent I don’t see any hot spot.

Now I’m ready to set up my camera and to see just how the bracelet looks.

A light reflector helps hide the camera

Some of jeweler Kristin Anderson’s work includes the difficult-to-photograph combination of silver with colored inlays and stones.

The Buehlers had specified the horizontal view of the bracelet and my job was to move the camera until I couldn’t see any reflection of the camera or me. To do this, I use a very inexpensive photo accessory called the Macro Flecta Reflector from Adorama photo-supply company in New York.

The Macro Flecta is a tiny round light reflector that mounts on your lens (it has a hole in the middle for this) and is about 12 inches across when opened. One side of the Macro Flecta is shiny metallic and the other is soft white.

I like the Macro Flecta because it does two things very well. It hides the camera and it throws a little extra light onto the front of an object. In this case, I used the white side to add a little soft light and a little sparkle to the gemstones.

I also try to fine tune images by placing small 8x10-inch or 5x7-inch white cards around the object to hide something or add a bit of light to a darkish area.

Reflected light can overexpose work

Because silver acts as a mirror, it will reflect the walls of the light tent. The problem here is that the sides of the light tent are also transmitting the light. This light is so bright that it can throw off your exposure meter and cause overexposure of the silver surfaces.

To allow for this possibility, I generally underexpose silver. If my camera meter says that at 1/30 of a second the lens aperture setting is f/11, I’ll use f/16 instead to get the right exposure for the silver.

That’s what I did with the Buehler bracelet and it is the reason that the background is actually a bit darker than it really was.

Adding elements to the shiny surface

At the beginning of this column I mentioned that while shiny silver surfaces are hard enough to shoot, the photography could get even trickier when an artist adds other elements to a work.

Lets use the silver inlayed pendant

by Apalachicola, Fla., jeweler Kristin Anderson as an example. Not only does the pendant have curved silver surfaces, it also has colored inlays and stones.

The problem produced by the addition of these colored surfaces and objects is that you can’t underexpose the photo to get the silver surfaces right. Underexposure would make the stones too dark and make the colored surfaces look muddy.

The solution to this problem goes beyond a knowledge of photography and dives into the realm of inspiration and intuition.

The answer I came up with was to turn the shiny silver side of the Macro Flecta toward the pendant to add a little extra light to its center. Then I crumbled up some aluminum foil, flattened it out and positioned it below the pendant and just outside of the picture frame. Watching through my camera viewfinder, I adjusted the foil until it bounced enough light on the stones to make them light up.

Photography is another art

I should point out that it always surprises me that many artists approach photography with fear. When they take photos, they seem to forget everything they know about color, light and composition. They lose the ability to take risks or to waste a few frames of film.

Photographing silver can be very difficult but it is doable by using simple steps.

1. Look at the object.
2. Decide what sort of background you’ll need.
3. Choose what sort of lighting you’ll need, from very soft and diffuse to harder spotlighting.
4. Set-up all of the above.
5. Look through the viewfinder and then think and play around. Move the work, change the camera position and experiment until you get the results you want.

Steve Meltzer is a Sarasota, Fla.-based photographer. He can be reached via e-mail at: stevefoto@compuserve.com.