How to light glitter on face

gary996

gary996

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Gary
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My wife does face painting and this evening she painted a lovely mask on her face, with a lot of glitter in it. I tried lighting her face to get the glitter to stand out to no avail. Tried a silver umbrella. Tries direct flash. Even tried just the bathroom lights on and no flash (12v halogen) but just couldn't get the glitter to pop. Any suggestions please
 
Try a shot slightly out of focus, this is just a guess and might not help one little bit, just a free suggestion.
 
sk66 said:
You probably need to light it more from the side. Try moving a flashlight around until you find the angle that the glitter is reflecting back to the camera.
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You need EITHER a small, hard light in exactly the right place (probably high and directly in front of where the face is pointing) AND a reflector that picks up some of the spare light, that adds fill to the dark areas - that's the 1 light method - OR 1 large soft light and 1 small hard light, the small hard light, at lower power, goes wherever it works best. That's the 2 light solution.
Try a shot slightly out of focus, this is just a guess and might not help one little bit, just a free suggestion.
Click to expand...
Not quite the right solution, but the thinking behind it is good. A cross hatch "filter" that causes diffraction of the highlights created by the glitter will really make them come to life, once you've created those highlights with the lighting.
 
The out of focus did work. A couple of shots I took with the wifes PAS, which are out of focus have produced the best glitter. It also used the inbuilt flash.
Mine with 5Diii just didn't work.
I will try your idea Gary. Softbox high and 45 deg and another flash + snoot on to face low power.
 
Never tried it with glitter, but the principle employed by jewellers shops to make everything sparkle is multiple small spot-lights, so that whatever angle the different facets fall, there's always a light that reflects in them.
 
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