Diffused specular highlights

Garry Edwards

Garry Edwards

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Garry Edwards
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Specular highlights are reflections of the light source - for example, catchlights in the eyes.
Diffused specular highlights are highlights that are large and transparent, so that you can see through them to the subject below.

Anyway, I've produced a simple tutorial on why they are important and how they can be achieved, hope it helps.
 
Nice one Garry :)
 
Thanks, I love reading this sort of thing.
 
For me, that's an excellent tutorial, with clear illustrations.

More, please! (products)

One small question.
The first pic, with the on-camera flash, shows the sides of the board clearly.
The overhead lighting makes them dark. What would you need to do to get the board edges lit, without spoiling the overall effect?
 
Stoptime said:
For me, that's an excellent tutorial, with clear illustrations.

More, please! (products)

One small question.
The first pic, with the on-camera flash, shows the sides of the board clearly.
The overhead lighting makes them dark. What would you need to do to get the board edges lit, without spoiling the overall effect?
Click to expand...
Many thanks. The idea, over time,is to build up a good learning resource, with different people contributing blogs on a wide range of different types of shoot.
As far as products go, there's this one on food photography (Michael Sewell) And I've also done this one on product photography - it's quite a detailed one so it's in 3 parts.

Back to your question. It's frankly difficult to light the leading edge of something like a chopping board, or at least when it's in contact with something like a smoked glass table top, without spilling light. It's do-able with a very tight honeycomb at a distance and running along the edge precisely, but TBH I wouldn't bother - I would take an extra shot with the light elsewhere (as in the on-camera flash), cut it out and drop the lit bit on top in PS.

With any lighting tutorial I always take the purist approach and do NOTHING in post, because I want people to see what the lighting, and the lighting alone, does - but in my day job, although I get it as close as I can in camera, CS5 is my friend.
 
Great tutorials Garry - your voice is different to what I imagined. I thought you'd be all 'ecky thump, Ilkley Moor byt'at' and all that. :lol:

Have bookmarked these to show some of the guys at work who do a bit of studio photography. :thumbs:
 
specialman said:
Great tutorials Garry - your voice is different to what I imagined. I thought you'd be all 'ecky thump, Ilkley Moor byt'at' and all that. :lol:

Have bookmarked these to show some of the guys at work who do a bit of studio photography. :thumbs:
Click to expand...
Ahh...
But why would a Welshman who lived in London most of his life speak with a Yorkshire accent? I think that the Welsh name could be a clue:lol:

Have you seen my latest one on adding detail to shots? Linked to in this thread
 
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