Photographing Glass (and Plastic)

For the last week I have been practicing taking photos of clear vessels for liquid. Let me tell you, it’s harder than I first thought! Wrestling with different light hitting something clear and reflective is not easy. You really have to focus on two different things:

• Reflective light, the light bouncing off of materials
• Refractive light, the light going through materials

Here you can see an example of reflected light, using a colored bulb

Note the blue hitting the white background — that’s refractive light!

To make things more interesting, I also set up different styles of photos:

Hero Shot:

Silhouette Shot:

Advertisement Shot:

Lifestyle Shot:

Flatlay shot: