In my previous post, I whinged about having to shoot crap. I hate to shoot things that I know will have little value. It’s not that I think I am such a great photographer, and that my talents are wasted on meaningless items, it’s that I am always pressed for time and I hate to waste time shooting a lot that I know will not gain enough to even pay for the time that I have taken to shoot it. Which is why I am always happy to find cool, effective short-cuts to challenging issues.
Case in point…
This jewelry chest has a mirror in the lid. Normally, you would have seen my reflection in the mirror, which I do not like to see, or post. Sometimes, I must stand in front of the mirror to get the shot. Typically, I would photoshop a color fill, or gradient, into the area of the mirror to cover myself. I hate to do that when the mirror has a nice, bevelled edge, as this one does, because I lose the look of the bevelled edge. I could take an hour to photoshop all the bevels back into the mask I use fr the cover, but that takes too much time, and I hate working in Photoshop.
I happened to chance upon a quick trick to keep myself out of the reflection and still highlight the mirror’s bevelled edges… doing what I was already doing, working with the tools I already had at hand!
I have mentioned before that I use white foam-core to bounce light back into subjects that I am shooting, so that darker, shadowy places get sufficient light. Here, I have a bounce card filling light onto the lower drawers. What I didn’t expect, but was happy to find was, the bounce card hid my reflection from view. Even better, it allowed the bevelled edges to be seen! In fact, the bounce card even approximates a lighting gradient, from white to dark grey, simply by angling the card away from the box. The mirror is… perfect.
I love it when a plan comes together.
I'm sure you do, Hannibal.