How to light this?

[browner01]

i have a hand made glass bauble with some lovely colours on a stand.

when you put a light behind it, it looks really nice.

i am trying to think of a way to light it so that it looks like it is glowing from inside.

i have tried a long exposure and flashing a light behind it but failed.

any ideas would be great

mike

looks similar to this :

 

[CraigDHD]

what equipment do you have?

what do you want for background?

at a guess if I was doing it and you were happy on a plain background that isn't pure white I'd probably hang it in front of a mount board and cut a hole behind the bauble to fire a flash through, start smallish and make bigger if required. If you want the light to appear from the middle I'd keep the board fairly close and hole as small as you can so you get fall off to the edges.

I'd probably use a second flash on the side, either in a softbox or reflected off white card or paper, to create a soft highlight to create a more 3d shape.

If you don't have flashes, 2 led torches, one pressed against the back of baulble one bouncing off reflector at side

 

[Garry Edwards]

There are always lots of different ways of doing everything but, as you've already discovered, backlighting it is very effective.
See this quick tutorial on brightfield lighting

But brightfield lighting may not be quite enough, and you may want to add a bit of light frontally as well, so that the specular highlights (reflections of the light source) add a bit of sparkle. If so, use the minimum amount of power consistent with getting the results you need - in other words, start with none, then very low power, then increase it a bit etc.