Recently while in Florida, I saw a couple of beautiful photos by Orlando Camera Club member Wallace Weeks where only the rim of an object was lit. Wallace, who is very generous with sharing knowledge, explained how he accomplished this, so I decided to try it for myself. The technique involves using a light source such as a softbox, covering about 2/3 rds of it with a flag (I used black) and shooting your subject into the light. In other words, your subject is directly between you and the light source. It is sort of like shooting into the sun! What results after some experimentation, is your subject with only the rim lit. As you can see from the image, I have captured some colour in the glass. The subject must be reflective but not necessarily transparent. It does require a bit of work in Photoshop to remove the odd specular highlight.
Comments 4
Outstanding! I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to get the lighting effect just right. Very impressive photograph.
Melanie
Thank you for the kind words. You are correct concerning the lighting. It takes a lot of trial and error to get it just right.
Wow! This looks very hard – “a bit of work”… hope you can enter this image in a competition at some point…it certainly deserves a red ribbon. See ya tomorrow.
Sheila
Thank you for the kind words. It is easier than you think. It just takes some practice and a bit of work in Photoshop to remove specular highlights.
Jim