Photographing Metal

Properly lighting and photographing metal presents some challenges. First, with such a reflective surface, metal will often reflect what is around it and present distracting reflections in an image. Second, to properly light a metal object the light must be placed in the object’s family of angles to adequately light the metal surface. For this assignment I came up with the idea of photographing knives outside of the normal kitchen setting and use them in a game of darts.

Starting to throw knives takes a friendly game of darts to a higher level of skill and danger. Metadata: f/22, 1/125, ISO100

The process to reach this final image took some time and willingness to alter my original idea. Initially, I had planned on using several knives in place of the darts and not using any darts at all. The multiple knives presented the problem of having different families of angles if they were not all angled the same way. I did manage to get them all more in line to reflect the light without additional distracting reflections. However, the knives then started falling out of the dartboard as I added gobs, or black cards, to create shadows and bring out the brand name on the knife blades. Apparently knives aren’t the best choice to play a game of darts with (not that I was actually throwing the knives at the dartboard though), and they started falling off the board. So with only one knife left in place I didn’t like the composition as much and added in the darts. I also had to work with the additional metal on the dartboard face and rim then the added darts. My goal with that metal was to light it to show the shape and form without distracting the viewer from the focal point of the knife.

My final lighting diagram for photographing a dartboard with a knife in the bullseye as the focal point.

I initially had a photograph with a wider view that included the entire dartboard, in which I tried to also light the rim of the board to distinguish it from the background. In the end I decided that I liked a closer cropped image that increased the focus on the knife in the center of the dartboard.

Uncropped final photograph, showing the lighting of the dartboard’s metal rim.