first mosaic shoot

[kevin_mahoney1]

<p>A friend of mine needs some high res photos of her mosaic work. These are reflective surfaces, and was wondering how to shoot them so A) I wont cast reflection in the tiles B) what angle should I place the camera (would it work if I shot the art piece straight on?) C) what lighting setup should I use. I`m open to any and all suggestions.<br>

Thank you in advance for your help.</p>

<p>Kevin</p>

[michaelmowery]

<p>First off is this art piece flat or is it round? What is the size of the art piece? These are very important questions. For the most part it will be trial and error on the job. You use your modeling lights on your flash to see where the reflections are and you keep inching the lights until they are gone.</p>

<p>That said there are two approaches that I recommend if there is no way to eliminate the reflections. If the art work is fairly small then use a large soft box that is at least 3x larger than the art work and place the soft box as close as you can. This way all reflections are reflecting the diffused soft box. If your art work is large then you will want to place your strobes further back and remove any soft box or umbrella and use the bare heads with a silver reflector. This way any reflection will be a point of light which you can easily retouch out in post.</p>

[tom_mann1]

Another approach is to take a half dozen or more different shots of the item using only one light, but moving the light (but not

the camera or object) between shots. Load all the shots into separate layers in PS with layer masks. Next, you go

through the layers one by one, and paint out the bad specular reflections in each layer mask. The final step is to set the

blending mode of all layers except the 1st to "lighten".

 

The net result should be pretty close to a nice, glint-free version of the item. The shadows around each of the mosaic pieces may be flattened too much by this technique, but a bit of tweaking of the layer opacities usually gets rid of this and restores three dimensionality.

 

Tom M

[Charles_Webster]

<p>Usually all you need to do for reflective art is to put your lights off axis enough that they don't create specular reflections. But it depends on how large your subject is. Bigger pieces mean putting the lights farther away, which in turn requires more powerful lights.<br>

You can't do this with on-camera flash.<br>

<Chas><br /><br /></p>

[kevin_mahoney1]

<p>@ Michael They are flat pieces, ranging from 9 x 12 to 30 x 36 inches. I can try your ideas, but where should I place my camera? Straight on perpendicular to the artwork? Or off to the side (where I would have to use PS for perspective correction...ugh) BTW Mike I`m on Long Island..Hi neighbor!</p>

<p>@Tom That`s an interesting idea Tom. Thanks. And I would be using a large light source too, I take it. I do have a Westcott Apollo softbox.<br>

@Charles..ahhh the angle of reflection principle..Yes I`m using off camera flash, and though I love to shoot through panels, her living room may not be large enough for that. So I will go with the Apollo, and see what happens.</p>

<p>Once again thank you guys so much.</p>

[michaelmowery]

<p>If this is for reproduction purposes or to show exactly what the artwork is without distorting it you must always shoot straight on. </p>

[tom_mann1]

Also, a couple of (obvious) things to pay attention to is whether or not the individual pieces of the mosaic lay flat or are all

are intentionally embedded intentionally at slightly different angles, and, if these are ceramic or other reflective material,

and have a glaze or they are matte.

 

FWIW, ever since I had to shoot two fire trucks at night (... lots of glints) for an recruiting shot, I've become a huge fan of

the flexibility of the separate layers approach. One can, of course, do each individual shot with whatever lights are most

appropriate.

 

Tom M