How to shoot reflective objects accurately

Shooting reflective surfaces or objects is a great challenge for many photographers and photographers, because a little carelessness can easily ruin your work and make you fall into despair. Although reflection is a beast that is difficult to tame, it is not difficult to overcome it if we can master the rules. Come and study.

In the next article, the author will show how to effectively control the reflection, use it for himself, and create powerful photographic works. Just like the following still life photo, it only uses some simple shooting techniques and necessary techniques and devices, but it can show good results.

In general, an object with a reflective surface will reflect light like a mirror, so if the main light source of our image coincides with the shooting angle of the camera or comes from the same direction, then this reflection will make the highlights of the picture overflow greatly and lose valuable details, thus making the whole subject look lack of texture and layering, and the effect looks like shooting directly with a overhead flash.

The key to solve the problem is to understand the basic principle and usage of light, the most commonly used of which is the reflection law that we have been in contact with since junior high school physics class. Generally speaking, when light is emitted from one homogeneous substance to another, the incident light, reflected light and normal are in the same plane; Reflected light and incident light are separated on both sides of the normal; And the reflection angle will be equal to the incident angle.

Aside from rigid physical theorems, this is actually very easy to understand for photography. It actually tells us not to let the camera position be at the same angle as the light source when shooting objects with reflective surfaces. The trick is to use a relatively large light source and place it opposite the camera position. In order to achieve better results, I suggest using studio flash and large soft box. Of course, you can also use some small equipment, or less expensive ways, such as preparing some white cardboard, an independent flash and flasher.

The following picture is the scene when I shot with these devices:

Through the reflection of white cardboard, the light emitted by the flash forms a larger light source, and correspondingly, its light becomes softer, which can create an excessively uniform light and shade effect for the subject, thus avoiding the overflow of highlights. This light also helps to highlight the texture of the background slate.

Although this technology is simple, it can simulate the effect of multi-lamp lighting. After that, we can adjust the overall effect of the picture by trying different shooting angles and changing the position of the light source, including stones and water droplets in the background, which is very important to improve the impression of the photo. Below is a set of my shooting samples. You can see that by changing the position, the picture presents a completely different effect.

Because we already know in advance that the reflection angle of light after passing through the reflecting surface is fixed, we can decide which camera position and light source position are easier to achieve better results.

In the schematic diagram above, the light at the "angle family" position will directly generate reflected light, while the light outside the "angle family" and coming from the same direction as the camera position will not shine on the specular reflection object. Even if we sometimes encounter diffuse light with unclear light angle, the "angle family" can give us an opportunity to decide how to place the light source according to the position of the camera. At first, we may feel a little overwhelmed by all the technical information of light, but once you really start to arrange and shoot, you will find it is not difficult. So, let's try. I believe you can make a good work.