photographing glass-blowing...share your experiences

Hello,

I'll be photographing a glass-blowing session soon, and wanted to get some

recomendations from anyone who has tried this before. There are many factors to

consider, heat close to the camera, what kind of lens to use. I'll attempt to

do fine-art type of pictures, long eposures to catch the glass moving and the

bright colors. If you have done this before, can you share your experiences?

I'll be shooting with a 5D and L lenses. I'm thinking either a 24-70, or

70-200. Both L

Thanks in advance,

I used to be a laboratory worker, and I did a lot of glass blowing at that time. For photographic purposes, it depends on what you are trying to show in your pictures. Most glass has considerable sodium in it, so you get a lot of bright yellow "flames" around the glass. These will greatly obscure the actual glass shapes being worked. If you want the yellow for showy purposes, you're fine, but if you want to show the glass, you'll need a filter to remove some or all of the yellow glare.

Glassblowers use a special filter to see through the yellow; it is called neodymium glass, and it removes nearly all the yellow. You could try a blue filter, but that may not do the job. Why not see if you can find a filter of that same type (neodymium glass) to shoot through? You might look into laboratory equipment suppliers or maybe even Corning Glass. Also, you could Google it...

Well I do want vivid colors so I don't want to kill those yellows, but I also don't want the image to have an ugly yellow cast. I want to capture abstract shapes (close ups) as the glass is shapped and it has those beautiful colors all around it.

forgive my questioning, but why would they blow glass at a laboratory. I'm talking about the people that make vases and scuptures and things like that. Is that what you are talking about as well?

thanks for your feedback

Good luck. I shot an instructional film on glass blowing a number of years ago. We had difficulties with the exposures (stopped down enough to not blow out the molten glass, but open enough to see the glass blower and tools), with the heat (it was difficult to get anything resembling a wide angle view because it required being close to the furnace), and with color balance (the light in the workroom was fluorescent and the furnace is obviously yellower).

Be sure to have a long lens, preferably one with image stabilization and get some blue filters to try to balance the color temp.

<Chas>