Exercise: Shiny surfaces.

"Find an object so shiny you can see your face in it, lay it on the floor over a simple background. Have the camera fitted to the tripod. Roll the tracing paper in the shape of a long cone so that the wide end will sit around the object, and so that it tapers upwards to the small end, which should just surround the lens."

All shot 1/200 f5.3 ISO 400 62mm.

I firstly photographed cutlery with no tracing paper attached so that you can see the effect.

Once the tracing paper was attached I took a second shot, this is my second attempt. The tracing was not quite touching the floor all the way round so the spoon still shows a lot of reflection.

My third attempt successfully removes most of the reflection but unfortunately you can still see the black dot of the lens on the spoon. Also the cutlery has lost its shine, the whole picture appears quite dark and the tracing paper has fallen into shot.

The next shot I tried the built in flash to see if I could restore some of the shine to the cutlery but it resulted in too much glare.

I then gave it a go with the diffuser over the built in flash, this came out quite well. There is a little reflection but the inside of my cone fell inward and this is obvious on the photo.

I think that my final attempt is probably my favourite. I had managed to re position the cone, and minimise the reflection as much as possible without making the the cutlery appear dull.

Conclusion.

I found this exercise quite difficult to get right. I found myself getting quite annoyed with the tracing paper and the whole situation felt a bit Blue Peter! I am reasonably happy with what I have achieved but I think that a lot more practise is probably required to perfect my technique.