Shiny thing

Here's a rather voluptuous chrome tap, and an exercise in lighting. How do you photograph a shiny thing then? Every surface reflects and, in a way, it has no colour of its own. First we clean the tap and remove every fingerprint. Then we get out the big sheets of white card, and the white shoot through photo umbrella, flash and radio trigger.

After all that effort you might think the result would be perfect, but no. Now I understand why people make their own softboxes for taking pictures of jewellery. 

Rather like photographing glass, photographing shiny things seems to be a specialised art. Try again Pete...


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