Reflecting on Reflections, Part 2
Author: weshoot
Without a doubt, the hardest single thing I ever photographed was, of all things, something so ubiquitous that we handle them every day. I am talking about door knobs. Plain, highly reflective, brass doorknobs. Now, why is it so hard to photograph a doorknob? Well, it becomes a lot more difficult when there are some rules. Rules like one would run into with a doorknob manufacturer looking for someone to shoot images of their products for promotions. Do you think they want a reflected image of a happy, smiling distorted photographer looking out from their new brochure at the viewer? How about seeing that photographer’s camera and tripod, or the space the doorknob happens to be in? Simple, inexpensive, plain, highly polished brass doorknobs become painful to contemplate as a product photographer. They not only are spherical and reflect the entire world around them, they have a backing plate made of the same stuff, that will reflect things that exist behind the knob, from the reflection on the back of the knob.
Several years ago, we had spoken with a potential client, the marketing department head at a large manufacturer of doorknobs, hardware, and faucets about working for her company. She said she had several photographers she used for shooting these products, but she said she would send us a sample of their products so that we could submit a test photograph to show that we could handle this type of photography, in case she needed our services. Parameters for shooting this product were clear. Shoot it on a 4″X 5″ transparency, and no retouching of any kind was permitted. She said they did any retouching needed at the graphics department at the manufacturer.
About 5 days later, the product arrived by UPS. There was a plain brown cardboard box inside the outer package. I opened it up and beheld a photographic nightmare. It was an inexpensive, highly-polished brass doorknob set, complete with keys.
It reflected everything! It saw me, the room, everything in the room, and to my horror, the backing plate re-reflected everything the back of the knob “saw.” I knew this was to be a fight. I looked at images of doorknobs in advertising. They looked perfect. Some were “brushed” metal – not polished, but still shiny. Some were dull finished, and just reflected highlights. The polished ones stood out. No reflections of photographers, cameras, tripods, rooms, etc. I assumed that there was some reflection of a camera lens somewhere during the taking of the image, as there was no way to avoid the reflection from the angle presented. A different angle may have allowed one to position the lens where the reflection would be positioned over the keyhole, but you can’t shoot there for different angles. The first problem includes camera, tripod and photographer reflections. One way to avoid this taking up a lot of room on the doorknob is to make a blind out of white material, like foam core, and cut a hole through which the camera lens “sees” the doorknob.
Although this cuts down on untoward reflections, it still reflects the lens and the hole, unless the hole is dark and tight around the lens. I figured this made for a minimum of retouching at the graphics department, and would be acceptable. A second consideration was the lighting. Lights or hot spots show up on the product itself and a smooth highlight with no hot spots would be a better solution. Everything I tried did not work! As said before, putting a piece of foam core in front of the doorknob cut down reflections, but I thought that aiming lights from behind the doorknob and bouncing the light toward the white foam core blind would produce the effect without bad reflections. I was wrong. The strobe “soft boxes” reflected into the back side of the door knob and re-reflected off the backing plate. I had distorted oblong light reflections staring at me from the backing plate.
It became evident there must be a way to do this. I tried white sheets, but the lights created hot spots, and it reflected any corners and folds. I had seen a shooting tent at my local pro camera store, and headed down there next. A tent like this was used to evenly light small products and I thought this was the ticket. It cost $250.00 plus tax. I got the tent home, and assembled it. It was made of a translucent white fabric, meant to diffuse the light inside. It also was rigid and had seams and a rigid frame inside the fabric which showed up in the reflections. It had several holes for camera placement, and try as I might with stuff to cover them, they showed up, too. Fortunately, I was able to return the tent for a refund as it really didn’t do the job.
I even talked to man who owned a company that made plastic blister packs in Santa Barbara. I drove out to Santa Barbara to get a prototype dome of a transparent, but clouded plastic that he was thinking of producing. It took out most of the distracting reflections, but reflected the cloudy nature of the dome and made the doorknob appear dull and not highly reflective. I sent it back to Santa Barbara with a thank you note and a description of the effect.
I finally built a box enclosure of translucent white plastic, got what I thought was a good image and sent that to the marketing manager. She said to keep the doorknob, and she would call us if she needed us. Last I heard, she was working for another company doing something completely different. She never called!
Below is the image I created, after scanning it and retouching it for our portfolio. Shiny, reflective doorknobs are tough. Try it if you doubt me.
– Gary Silverstein
Tags: 4x5, camera, photography, Photoshop, reflecting, reflections, retouch, shoot, shooting, view, view camera
June 24th, 2010 at 4:29 pm
I can see that you are an expert at your field! I am launching a website soon, and your information will be very useful for me.. Thanks for all your help and wishing you all the success.
June 24th, 2010 at 11:38 pm
Really great post/article really informative.
June 25th, 2010 at 12:47 am
Please tell me it worked right? I dont want to sumit it again if i do not have to! Either the blog glitced out or i am an idiot, the second option doesnt surprise me lol. thanks for a great blog!
June 25th, 2010 at 1:12 am
Very informative blog. Cool.
June 28th, 2010 at 4:13 pm
[…] steel. Brushed stainless is no shiny brass doorknob to shoot, see previous blog post “Reflecting on Reflections, Part 2,” but it is definitely something difficult. The unit (see images below) is a rather large […]
July 1st, 2010 at 11:30 pm
Great post. Can I ask you a question? I want to start a blog as well that is why I was searching on the internet for blogs to use as examples, do you find you have to be perfect in your grammar to have people like what you write? I have been told I write like I speak, so I was wondering if that was a bad thing.
July 2nd, 2010 at 2:12 am
OTI, Just make sure that people understand you, and use proper grammar, even if you write like you speak.
GS
July 10th, 2010 at 12:01 am
Random question: I am just starting my blog, but how did you start gaining readership? was it just natural? I mean how did people start finding you?
July 10th, 2010 at 12:32 am
How did you find me, T.S.B.? Try tweeting about your blog. Join blogging directories. Direct people to it through LinkedIn and Facebook!
August 3rd, 2010 at 2:57 pm
Thanks for this useful article.