Preventing your reflection in the subject

It was a very dull day yesterday, so I grabbed my wife's saxophone and tried a few shots of the key work, however I was unable to prevent my camera & tripod from being reflected from the sax. Now short of purchasing my wife a new black sexy saxophone, does anybody have any techniques for dealing with this. I am a total beginner at indoor photography and have no studio lighting.

Graham

Tricky, as polarizers will not affect reflections in metal.

You might have to resort to photography though a large white sheet, with a hole cut out for the lens. Or change your camera angle to include better (!) reflections, or use a longer lens so the size of your reflection becomes less obvious.

Thanks John I will give that a try.

Graham

shiny metal and reflected surfaces:

two issues:
angle of incidence = angle of reflectance, law of physics, not mine. think pool shots.. what the surface reflects, and how the light hits it determines what you see...

the other is you need to light the reflections, not the subject....to work this concept for you, you need to light or hide the object/area that is reflecting in the subject, as John suggested...


here's how I'd do it...

I'd set my backdrop stand up in front of my subject, and hang a white sheet from it, then I'd hang a narrower black cloth down the cnter of the white to create a black rectangle with two large rectangullar strips of white on each end.

I'd put two lights behind this to put the light through the white strips (Strip lights from the subjects position) and a hole through the black area for my lens.


from where your sax is positioned, the lens poking through the black rectangle won't really show it'll look solid black, the white strip light effect from each side of the black area will really define the edges and curves of a sax, and you can control contrast by lowering the power of one of your lights.

Graham. Two pieces of mirror glass set in a vee shape. Shooting from front on you will get three reflections and no camera in the shot. Great fun. You can also put mirror glass under the vee shape. It will open all sorts of possibilities. If you can find a piece of smoked glass you will increase your effect. I find using mirror glue to stick these pieces onto ply/MDF. helps Also possible is to put your subject onto the miror glass and shoot from a high position.
regards Thoramay.

Thanks Don & Thoramay

Two very different approaches, both very interesting. I should never have taken that mirror to the dump last week! I will give both techniques a try once I can scrounge some bits from work. Thanks to you both for some very detailed and thought out answers to my photographic fumblings.

Graham

Nothing ventured, Graham. Will put a pic on the Gallery using mirrors, just to give you an interest.
regards Thoramay.