Lighting setup for glass

Many people believe that lighting a glass object is not much different from lighting other objects. But the truth soon ground them in the reality and then they start looking for more information to achievement this. 

Lighting glass is not as easy as it may sound and in most cases requires unique lighting setups for each glass object separately. 

Achieving lighting glass, depends on the level you control both lights and environment. 

Let's see some real examples: 

  

When i first post these photos there were many who asked me about my lighting setup. Also there were few who believed that i used specialized equipment.  

The truth comes through the following photos:

As shown above, my lighting setup to shoot glass, use three flashes. 

One for the background, one for glass and finally one for the fill. The last could be replaced by a reflector but bear in mind that this will dramatically affect your black / dark background, which in my case i did not  want to and maybe you also think to avoid.

The background flash has a DIY grid made by straws, and a LEE colored gel filter. In the future i'll write more about shooting with colored gels and grids.

What is not shown in these photographs is a plain white A4 paper i used some photos later to give an extra white glow on the left side of the glass. You will also notice that i placed a cardboard underneath the fill light flash. This is because as I wrote above i wanted to  highlighted only the object and not the background. 

The above lighting technique for glass is personal and has developed after experimentation.