Dark Field Lighting

For this short assignment we had to look into what dark field lighting is and create our own photo that uses the technique.

Dark field lighting is a lighting technique used in studio photography when photographing objects that are clear or nearly clear, such as glass or clear plastic objects. There are a few different ways of creating dark field lighting but the most popular is to use two lights, one at either side of the object facing the side of the object. This is then usually combined with a dark background so that only the edges of the object show.

Here is the photo that i took while trying to create dark field lighting.

Overall i am a little unpleased with the image. I used two softboxes, one at each side of the scene. I think i didn't quite recreate dark field lighting as there is too much detail in the glass. I added the bottle to add some interest but i think this may not have worked as the white label has bounced a lot of reflections into the glass. Also i think the angle of the softboxes could have been improved as as the white stripes down the sides of the bottle are a little too wide. Overall i think it is a reasonably good image but i think it needs some work to make it fit into dark field lighting.