Glass Exploration

February 7th, 2022

Ii got this glass sculpture many years ago in Bandon Oregon. I love the intense colors in the sculpture. It sparkled in the sunshine and drew me immediately to it. Unfortunately I have never been able to fully display this sculpture or photograph it to fully show its true beauty.

In this setup I had diffusion paper in front of a single Profoto D2 strobe with a V-Flat to the right. The strobe was to the left and the paper was angled to create a gradient reflection. I like how the dark background and surface emphasize the colors. Unfortunately I was not able to get the dark shadow out of the far right. Also I wanted the intensity found in the colors on the right over the entire sculpture.

I tried removing the v-flat from the right to see if I could remove the shadow. I liked the smooth colors but they are muted and don’t show the vibrance.

I next changed direction and put the Profoto D2 with barn doors behind the sculpture. I loved how the light shining through brought out the deep intense vibrant colors. I didn’t like the bright reflections to the right and left. I used the barn doors to remove the reflections with no luck. Putting the strobe higher and lower simply could not bring out the sculpture’s full colors without reflections. I tried using a diffuser instead, but it didn’t help remove the bright white reflections.

I liked the way in which backlighting brought out the color. It occurred to me to use the diffusion paper combined with the strobe to bring out the color and create the uniform surface and background. The challenge was avoiding blown out highlights and positioning the strobe to fully bring out the colors. I added v-flats on both sides to bring more colors in the edges.