Left: natural light from the rear, photographed against a sheet of white paper.
Sometimes the standard "light against dark" technique just doesn't work, as in the example shown at right above. George looks as if he's about to set out for the beach - his image is rendered in negative and he appears to be wearing shades. To get the best out of this particular glass, it has to be photographed against a light background and then we run the risk of losing the label completely.
Reflections:
In this example, we don't have to worry about reflections
because the light background is going to drown out pretty much
anything other than a direct camera flash.
Background:
To make
the label stand out as clearly as possible, I had to flip the
normal combination of bright label and dark background.
The piece of paper upon which the glass sits was placed right in
the window to catch as much light as possible. It's
another bright overcast day, but here a sunny day
might actually have been better. Direct sunlight would
have been too much -- the light would have bounced around inside
the lens and caused hot spots to appear on the
image.
Contrast: To render the label dark
and hence allow it stand out against the light background,
I cast a shadow on the glass itself. I used a piece of
white paper held about an inch above the glass to help darken
it. George now takes on on a more natural
appearance. In retrospect, the dark band at the top
of the photo should probably have been excluded when taking the
photo, but I liked the fact that it's absorbed by and helps
gives definition to the rim.