How can I photograph a painted glass bottle so it clearly looks like glass, not plastic?
Asked 12/17/2013
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I’m photographing a bottle made of glass, but in photos it can look more like plastic. How can I light or stage it so viewers immediately read it as glass? One complication is that the bottle is painted on the inside, so it may not be fully transparent.
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
12y ago
2 Answers
11
I'd recommend reading the book Light: Science and Magic by Hunter, Fuqua, and Biver. It has a whole chapter dedicated to lighting glass.
From memory, it says that with glass it's lighting the edges correctly that is important in coveying the qualities of glass.
(No connection to the book by the way, other than being a satisfied reader).
Originally by user14399. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user14399
12y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
To make glass read as glass, emphasize its edge reflections and specular highlights. Glass usually looks convincing when it has bright, clean highlights along the contours, so use 2–3 large diffuse light sources and position them to define the bottle’s outline.
If the interior paint still lets some light through, try backlighting or letting light pass through the bottle to show translucency. Even a small glowing source behind it can help separate it from plastic.
Other cues can also help: if appropriate, putting liquid in the bottle can create refraction/magnification effects that people strongly associate with glass. Very soft, diffused lighting is generally better than harsh direct light.
If you want to go deeper, lighting glass is a classic studio-lighting problem; books like Light: Science and Magic are often recommended because they explain how reflections define transparent subjects.
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