Photographers invent a simple way to capture objects with shadows

Photographers, especially commercial product photographers, will know the ‘pain’ of photographing silhouettes. They make it more difficult to adjust the lighting and can even reflect the image in front, giving photographers ‘free’ selfies while taking product photos! Photographer Erik Espinosa Recently invented a fairly simple way to solve this problem.

Sharing with Petapixel, Mr. Espinosa said: “In 2016, I got a project to photograph kitchen appliances including spoons, cocktail shakes. Capturing these shaded objects required a lot of post-production editing, even many photos taken then collage. Besides it was also difficult to set-up the lights, I had to use a lot of different lights and shades. And now I came up with a method to be able to ‘get a monopoly’! “

“I used the reflection of a two-dimensional mirror like in a police interrogation room to create a set of products called Entero.”

The kit includes a 2-dimensional mirror in the shape of a hemisphere, facing the product completely and the lighting system at the bottom. When the light is turned on, the outside can see inside the product, but the product will not ‘see’ through and will not create a reflection image.

Here are some pictures taken using Entero:

Looks a bit dirty, doesn’t it? But when retouched, it will create a very clean image like below:

The end result is not always perfect, objects with circles often still have a bit of reflection. But things with flat surfaces look no different than captured from sophisticated set-ups.

Mr. Espinosa said that he will not produce this product himself for sale but is in the process of finding a manufacturer who can bring his ideas to market: “I am currently working at a company that I love so much that I have no intention of going out of my own business.”