Studio Problem Solving

Somtimes when working with lighting, we reach a wall.  This product shoot involving a watch is a perfect example.  I was shooting this watch for my stock/commercial portfolio.  I shot it on black plexi-glass to utilize the reflection of the watch as part of the composition.  A simple monolight in a softbox and some fill and black cards made up the ingredients for this recipe.  A canon EOS 40d on a tripod, with a 150mm lens completed it.  I finally got the right combination of highlights and shadows that I wanted by manipulating the two cards.  The black card I used the control the reflection of the softbox and other stray highlights that were hitting the highly reflective black plexiglass.  The white card gave me just enough fill. 

Now for the challenge.  This watch happens to glow in the dark.  I wanted to get a shot of nicely lit watch with the face glowing. 

Ok, so first I need to get the watch to glow.  I pulled out my favorite tool:  the multiple exposure!  I knew I already had the original shot in the bag, so I simply shut off my studio room lights, and shot the exact same composition and angle exposing for the glow in the dark faceplate.  Pretty simple.  Later I would just brush it in using layers in photoshop.

Now I realized I had another issue.  I am so glad I realized this at the time an not when I got in photoshop and had the whole set broken down already.  The issue at hand was the glare on the watch’s glass face I was getting from the camera angle I was at.  In my original shot, it wasn’t a big deal.  The glare was manageable and I feel it didn’t distract to much from the watch itself.  In the case of the glow in the dark watch, it really would have hindered the effect.  I knew if I changed the camera angle, relative to the watch, it would solve the problem, however it would not work well trying to merge the two copies in photoshop.  I could maybe move the light around and fix the glare, but then the face would not be lit like I wanted and most importantly the same way the first exposure was.  So what did I do?  Pulled out a circular polarizer, screwed it on the lens, and rotated it until most of the harshess in the glare was gone.  I could tell when to stop rotating, by watching the reflecting of the whole watch on the plexiglass disappear.  So in the glow in the dark image you see below, I used a total of 3 separate exposures to create a glare free, glow in the dark, studio shot of a watch.  I haven’t been doing a lot of landscape photos lately, but it is a good thing I had that polarizer in my bag.  It saved me a lot of time in photoshop in the end.