I didn’t plan to photograph wine glasses again today, but I decided to play with diffused backlighting and after I set up my diffuser in the bay window and placed a bouquet of flowers in front of it, I started thinking about how a wine glass would look with a white diffused background instead of a black background and what if I used more light from the sides than just the window light? Out came the OTT lights again, this time with vellum diffusers taped over the light bulbs. The problem was that the diffuser is one color of white and the paper on which I set the wine glass was another color of white; since white is the presence of all colors apparently some whites are more colorful than others. Disappointed in my results, I decided to try a black background and placed a thin strip of black velvet atop the diffuser. I took a few shots with the black background. Once again, the colorful reflections that I always seem not to notice were prevalent but thanks to a black and white conversion, those reflections are toned down. And, thanks to black and white conversion, the wine glass on the white background looked better to me, too.
I took both shots at f/16 and ISO 100. The white glass needed 1/4 second shutter speed and the black 4/5 of a second and the focal lengths were slightly different due to my fiddling with placement. I still prefer the black background. And, these are photos of different wine glasses. When I placed the wine glass on the black background, I realized that the hard water spots show up on the black; the first time I took a photo of this wine glass almost a year ago, it was brand new and pristine. Luckily, and thanks to Costco, I have a dozen (minus one that was shattered to smithereens some months ago) so I had a pristine one waiting in the wings. The spots don’t show up on white but they sure look bad on black.
