Common photography problems I see

[john lucas]

I have a few minutes this morning before my first client arrives so I thought I would comment on the photography I see here and try to help.

First of all. If your shooting something and having problems feel free to email me at Jlucas@tntech.edu. Send me a photo of your set up and a closer photo of the piece. I can usually make useful suggestions. There aren't any set rules for how to shoot artwork. You must be willing to move the lights and experiment.

The most common problem is shooting with the camera flash on. This produces a hot spot right in the middle of the piece and a hard shadow around the piece. I see people using the flash even if they are using Quartz halogen lamps to light the piece. I know why they do. The front of the piece is still too dark so they are trying to add light. This light is a different color than the quartz lights so it shifts the color of the piece and of course it still produces that hot spot in the middle. The solution is to move your quartz lights around until one of the lights the front of the piece.

Deer in the headlight look. I see this a lot. This is caused by using 2 lights space apart on each side. The lights are the same height and close to the same brightness. The solution is to move one light up quite high and aim it down. This produces a more natural lighting look because that's how our sun looks. Then take the second light and make it dimmer so there is a little bit of shadow on the side opposite the high light. This gives the piece more shape and changes appearance of the highlights.

Remember, you don't necessarily have to point the lights right at the subject. The edge of the light pattern produced by that light will usually be dimmer and softer looking. If you point the light toward the camera be sure and shade the lens to reduce flare from that light. If you point the light at the background you may have to shade the background to change the look of the background.

When I teach classes on shooting art work I use a photo booth made from pvc and white translucent fabric. One trick I teach is to simply move the piece around in the booth. It doesn't have to be in the center. For example lets say you put the one light up high to light the top and one side of the booth. Now the left side of the piece is too dark. Instead of adding another light which often cause other problems, just move the piece closer to the side wall on the dark side of the piece. This bounces more light back in and solves that problem.

If the front of the piece is too dark simply move the piece deeper into the booth. Quite often if this doesn't work you can put a white reflector to the shadow side of the light and bounce light back into the front of the piece. You will have to play with the position of this reflector. I have pieces of 2x8's that I cut and glued some copper grounding wire into. I can set these on the floor and tape reflectors to them so the students can position these where ever they need. I also keep smaller 2x4 pieces with several holes drilled in the front and side. We cut up smaller pieces of the ground wire and taper reflectors to these to bounce light where it's needed. Don't forget you can use aluminum foil or mirrors to bounce light if a white card isn't enough.

Color. If your camera has the option try setting the white balance to one of the other settings. Auto will often work but may change the color balance if your piece changes color. If you have tungsten or quartz lights use the tungsten white balance.

Focus Look at your photos carefully before posting. There really isn't a good reason to post an out of focus photo. You should at least reshoot a piece if it's out of focus. Auto focus doesn't always work. It will focus on the front or back of a piece or even on the background. On a bowl you should be focusing on the front or about 1/3 of the way through the piece most of the time. Occasionally if the figure on the back wall of the bowl is outstanding focus there.

Most modern cameras have focus lock. You push the shutter button down with the focus point where you want the focus. Hold the button down and shift the camera for better composition. Then finish pushing the button.
If you have trouble getting it to focus where you want try putting something in the scene such as a white piece of paper with cross hatch black lines on it. In the bowl scenario I put the paper in the bowl about a third of the way back. Push the button down and let if focus. pull the paper out and finish the shot. Granted this might take really long arms or an assistant sometimes but it does work.

Needless to say it all works better when the camera is on a tripod. Focus is easier to position. composition is better and you don't have camera movement to blur the image.

If your shooting really really glossy pieces good luck. Seriously, all the above may help but you still may have really bad reflections. If that's the case send my an e-mail and I'll send you my article on shooting really glossy pieces. It's a step by step walk through showing the problems and how I worked around them using simply lighting. It is very challenging to shoot these things and what I've included in this is a little involved. However you do get to see the trouble shooting procedures and what I steps I took to try and solve them. Below is a sample photo I did on the glossy shoot. This piece was so glossy it reflected everything in the room. As you can see I solved those problems.

Well I was going to add some more but a new photo assignment just came in and I have to hit the floor running. I also have a PDF on lighting tricks using a photo booth that might help some of you. Feel free to e-mail me for that.

 

[Jason Silva]

I've had the most luck taking pictures of my work on an overcast day with a white retractable window shade as the back drop.

 

[john lucas]

The overcast day is what I'm trying to simulate with the photo booth. Overcast days unfortunately are too unpredictable. The color shift varies from morning to night and even how cloudy it is. If your shooting in your back yard the green trees can add a green cast to everything. Not to mention rain wind and cold weather.
I've seen a youtube video recommending that you shoot paintings by placing them in the open rear end or your mini van. This simulates a cloudy day with no direct sunlight. Sounds silly but it works. It's not as good for shooting 3D pieces however and it's a lot more expensive to buy one of those than building my photo booth.
Most problems encountered using the photo booth is simply having the lights too close If you can light the booth more evenly it simulates the cloudy day. In fact it may be too even and your pieces look flat. You need some shadow and some highlight to make a piece look 3D. If your pieces have a lot of texture (think Molly Winton's or John Jordan's) then you need harsher shadows or highlights to show off that texture.

 

[john lucas]

I forgot that the glossy photography PDF is on our club website. That will be a lot easier to access for some of you. There are other good tips there as well. Enjoy. http://www.cumberlandwoodturners.com/htm/tips.htm

 

[Bill Boehme]

Great suggestions, John. I would like to mention a few other tips.

• I have seen many people get really close, like only one or two feet away from the subject because they have the lens set to the widest field of view possible. The problem here is that this creates perspective distortion, a.k.a. "fat nose". Instead, try this approach: zoom in to a moderate optical telephoto setting (do not use digital telephoto) and back away from the subject. It wold be ideal if you can get about 8 feet from the subject and still have it large enough in the frame. If your camera has an Av mode, then set it to a small aperture such as f/11 or f/16 to increase the depth of field. However, with P&S cameras, DOF is not nearly as significant an issue as it is with SLR and DSLR cameras. Also, use the lowest ISO speed so that the picture will not be "grainy". All of the above suggestions will necessitate putting the camera on a tripod because of the really slow resulting shutter speed, but that is a good idea anyway because many people flinch when they press the shutter which causes motion blur even though focus might be perfect.
• You might really like your chartreuse beach towel, but save it for the beach and not as a background for photographing your favorite turning. Same thing normally goes for patterns or other "busy" backgrounds. They are just distractions. In fact, stay away from towels altogether.
• Some people hover over their turning and shoot it nearly straight down so that it just looks like a disk that does not reveal much about the form of the turning. Instead, get down much lower -- start on the same horizontal plane as the turning and then raise the camera while still keeping it horizontal until you see a flattened oval for the top of the bowl or HF. This will typically be no more than about 20° elevation above the horizontal. Remember, try to avoid pointing the camera down at an angle or else perspective distortion might once again become an issue.
• John mentioned white balancing. Many cameras now have the really useful ability to set a custom white balance with the lighting conditions that you will be using. Simply use a sheet of plain white cheap copier paper -- do not use the fancy bright white ink-jet paper because it has UV brighteners that screw up white balancing. Every type of light has its own color and everything that the light strikes in the vicinity of your subject will modify the color of the light to some extent. That is why it is normally (meaning always) best to have a neutral background so that colors are not distorted. Also, it is almost always bad news to use "mixed" lighting. The most offensive example is probably flash and fluorescent used at the same time.
• If you properly white balance an image and avoid mixed lighting, it is possible to get a really nice exposure in outdoors open shade even when the open shade is being provided by a nice bright green tree. Open shade means that the lighting is being provided by the atmospheric glow of the sky and NOT from direct sunlight. In order to achieve this, you must have a clear open view of the sky above. Being underneath a carport or porch or awning that blocks the sky above does not qualify as open shade.

 

[john lucas]

Excellent suggestions Bill.

 

[Joe Greiner]

In addition to use of the tripod, use the camera's self-timer. After 10 seconds, any operator-induced jitter will be dissipated, especially with lowest "film" speed to allow long exposures.

 

[Jake Debski]

Thanks John

Thank you for offering to help those that are photo challenged, myself included. Giving ones time when, from my prospective you have very little to spare, is the hight of generosity.

 

[Gretch Flo]

Thanks

Thank you for offering to help those that are photo challenged, myself included. Giving ones time when, from my prospective you have very little to spare, is the hight of generosity.

John-you are so great as are others who take the lengthy time to "set us straight"!!!! I (we) am so appreciative. Gretch

 

[john lucas]

Thanks. There are a lot of good photographers that visit here. What I would like to suggest is a sort of learning question. Post a photo of your work along with a photo of your shooting set up. I would be willing to critic the shot and offer suggestions and I'm sure you will get others involved.
Why would you want better photography? Well it's simply fun to share what you are working on and it really helps us appreciate the effort going into a piece when you can see it clearly. I love to see work of all calibers. We get to watch people grow as turners and that's really cool. I remember Molly Winton and Andi Wolfe's early pieces as well as several others who are now the up and coming artists.
It's also a great feeling to get a photo of your work published. Let me tell you the editors of all the magazines are hungry for good photos of good work. How many of you have ever sent a photo to one of the magazines. I know I often forget. Sometimes it takes a while to get it published. I remember one day opening up a magazine and seeing one of my pieces. It was over a year and I had forgotten I even sent that one. Sometimes your piece is just the perfect one to fill a space and editor will use it.

 

[john lucas]

I don't know why I didn't try to post these this way instead of having to send them to you. I'll try to post the other 2 here as well.

 

[john lucas]

The other 2 are apparently too large to post here. I don't know how to shrink them. For the Glossy photography handout you can go here to our club tips pages and you will find it
http://www.cumberlandwoodturners.com/htm/tips.htm

 

[Bill Boehme]

A couple of my images

I will try to get a chance to get a shot of my set up in a few days, hopefully. In the meanwhile, here is a verbal description of what I use. My "table" is a B&D Workmate and for the background I use a Flotone Graduated Studio Gray paper (actually PVC plastic). I use gaffer's tape to fasten the top end to the wall and create a gentle sweep from top to bottom. The bottom edge is taped to the front of the Workmate. I have two light stands and use two 500W 4800K tungsten bulbs with focusing reflectors and shoot into two large umbrellas. The lights are placed on both sides of the table with one light fairly high and the other about the same elevation as the camera. I usually have the lights fairly close to the table.

Occasionally I will use flags (sometimes also called "gobos") to reduce highlights. I have not tried using the light modifier cards that Jamie Donaldson demonstrated at SWAT last year, but I need to give it a try. I really enjoyed his program. He has a wealth of information to share. He also designed a really clever low cost lighting set up.

I normally take a few shots of a WhiBal card to periodically get a white balance. I also sometimes keep the card at the edge of the FOV and later crop it out during post processing of the RAW files.

My current camera is a Canon 7D and the lens that I use for photographing woodturnings is a Canon 70 -200 mm f/2.8 zoom. The lens has image stabilization, but I make sure that it is turned off for tripod shooting. I normally shoot from a distance of 8 to 10 feet with a focal length of about 100 to 140 mm depending on the size of the turning. I use an aperture of f/11 to f/16 depending on the DOF (depth of field) that I need. I focus at the mid point of the turning by setting a focus target at that distance. I also use the lowest ISO setting of 100 for the best quality images and finally I set the camera to save the RAW image files. There is actually no reason why I could not also get perfectly acceptable images from a P&S (point and shoot) camera with this lighting set up.

One of the big problems with my set up is that I get big pinwheel shaped reflections of the umbrellas when shooting shiny turnings. I need to read your paper on ways to deal with those pesky reflections.

 

[Joe Greiner]

I haven't digested the whole paper on glossy photography yet. It's an awkward problem: convey the reflectance, without reflecting everything.

An old trick I'd heard about, but haven't tried, comes from photography of highly polished silverware, e.g. platters and bowls. The idea is to lightly dust the product with talcum powder. I suppose you can vary the amount of powder in various parts of the product, to produce the desired effect. But that could be almost as tedious as manipulating the lights, and then the product needs to be cleaned afterwards. Also, probably works best only with white, or near-white, products.

 

[john lucas]

Joe I haven't tried talcum powder but have used a product called non-glare. I was always nervous about spraying anything because you done know what finish the artist is using and whether it will be difficult to get off. It also takes away all the gloss. I have masked off just the area where the highlight is and sprayed that but boy is that a pain.
On wood one alternative is to shoot it before you get to the really glossy stage. I have a friend who makes very high end furniture with hand rubbed French polish. What he started doing was to rub it down with 4/0 steel wool, 600 or 1200 grit paper depending on how it reflects light and then we shoot it that way. It saved a huge amount of time in shooting the piece and made almost no difference in the photos at all. It also had the advantage of handling the piece to get it to the shoot was less problematic because he was going to go back and do the final finish and could rub out any handling marks.

 

[john lucas]

proping up bowls and platters

Nothing is worse for showing off bowls and platters than a stand of some sort. Not that they don't look good it's just that it takes your eyes away from the bowl. The object of good photography of artwork is to show off the artwork to its best. Below are two samples of things I've done to prop up work.
I used paint cans for years simply because we have them around. I use everything from spray paint, and stacked quart cans to gallon cans depending on what I needed. If you look you will see the black gaffers tape on the bottom of the can. That's to help conceal it if you happen to see it behind the bottom of the piece. If proping the can directly against the piece won't work without showing the can then I put a dowel on the top so the can is further back. This usually works.
This year I painted a bunch of bricks with a rubber black paint. I use these now more than I use the paint buckets. I can stack them in different ways to make them more rigid and can tape dowels to them to support the work.
There is one more that I use on occasion but is only useful if you use seamless paper backdrops and don't mind cutting a hole in them. You use a longer dowel rod and hold it with some device or stand behind the backdrop. Then cut a hole in the backdrop and at the proper height to not show and poke the dowel through. Then tape it to the piece to hold it up.
Sorry about the ugly platter. I couldn't find anything around the studio but a frisbee.

 

[Bill Boehme]

John, thanks for your great in-depth critique on the three images. I definitely see what you mean by the lighting being too flat on some of the images. I haven't really been fully aware of how much shadows can be used to bring an image to life until recently after soaking up some of the tutorial information on The Strobist site.

I probably should get at least one shoot-through umbrella. I have a darker "Thunder Gray" graduated background that might help with the lighting on some of the turnings. I do have some strobes where the light output can be controlled without changing the color temperature, but have been hesitant to use them because adjusting the lights to get the shadows right seems to be too "fiddly" and I am not sure that they would have enough power output. I am not quite ready to fork out the money for the big boy strobes with modeling lights.

 

[john lucas]

Bill I shot with hand held strobes for years. I was and still am a big fan of the older Vivitar 283 and Sunpack 433. Mostly because of the manual power ration adjustment. But even in automatic mode I use them very similar to the way I use our big lights.
I would set up one light on a stand or even lay it on book cases or whatever aimed at the subject. I would pick an fstop, like F8 and set the flash to the f8 auto setting. That way I knew I would get f8's worth of power out of that light. Then I could adjust my camera to 5.6 if I wanted that light to be the brighter highlight kind of light or I would set the camera to f11 if I just wanted to use that light as a fill light. Then I would use my on camera flash and set it for either fill normal depending on what I wanted.
In the studio with the big lights I set up the main light and decide whether it will be a highlight to give shape to the piece or if it will be the main exposure to show off the color of the piece. Once I have that set then I start working with ways to fill in the shadows either using bounce cards, mirrors or another light. I try to use as few lights as possible. More lights often mean more shadows or more reflections to deal with so if I can use fill cards I will because they cause less problems. Mirrors are kind of inbetween sometimes causing shadows or reflections and sometimes but they are worth playing with.

 

[Jamie Donaldson]

Anyone who has an older .......

...Vivitar 283 or other older strobes should not use flash sync directly connected to the camera, as excess trigger voltage could fry a circuit board. Most strobes made in the last 5 yrs. should be fine, and strobe slaves can make the older units useable without endangering digital cameras. Very interesting that John and I have exactly the same old Vivitars and Sunpacks, but I recently bought a newer Vivitar 285 HV for the times I need a flash to mount in the camera hot shoe for "quicky" flash shots.

 

[Bill Boehme]

I have an old Vivitar 285 (at least 35 years old). Supposedly, my Canon 7D PC connector port is compatible with the high trigger voltage strobes, but when checking out the strobe recently, I discover that I had left some batteries in the unit for who knows how many years and they had made a mess of the battery holder contacts. If I ever get a "round tuit", I might see if I can get it back in working order. I probably also need to replace the big capacitor. I really liked that old flash -- it even made a POP sound like a flashbulb at full power.

 

[john lucas]

Yea I use those flashes off camera only with optical slave units. They are used to add either fill light or highlights to add more shape and interest to the lighting in the photo.

Robert Manning sent me an e-mail and said he had posted 2 photos in the AAW GAllery. He shot them with on camera flash. Absolutely nothing wrong with this if it meets the criteria of your needs. In this case it's simply to show some great work to other turners without having to spend a lot of time working on the photos. The pieces aren't very glossy so the hotspot in the middle is not too obnoxious. There are of course hard shadows around the piece, but again, what does it matter in this case. We can see the work clearly and define it's shape and color. It's sharp and well focus so it serves it's intended purpose of showing us the work. I also shoot pieces with on camera flash when I want to show people the work but it's not a piece I need to shoot seriously. Good job Robert I've always liked those pieces where the pith is oriented to purposely create a warped look.
I want to stress that it's not my goal to put anyone down for the photography they do. It's only to try and help you get better images of your work to show it off. It's up to you to decide how far you want to go.

 

[Robert Manning]

You're absolutely right, John, Yellow Moon was not a particularly challenging form to photograph with it's matte finish. I could also dodge the hotspot. It just takes time. In the past, one technique I employed, was to photograph my work after the seal coat and before I applied a high gloss finish.

I uploaded sharper versions of Yellow Moon last night so if you refresh your browser, you can view them.

 

[Bob Edwards]

critic

John, I would be interested in viewing some of other peoples set up and your critic. A compilation of these examples with your comments would represent a wealth of information. You don't have to show them all or acknowledge the owner. Just pick those that best illustrate the problem and your fix.
Your knowledge on this subject is most appreciated. I look forward to seeing more.
Thanks a lot!!!

 

[John Torchick]

Photos

John, et al., thanks for the tips on taking pictures. I have a time trying to take close-up photos of custom fishing rods. Shadows, bright spots, etc. plague me. John, how many pictures have you taken over the years?

 

[john lucas]

I hope people do send photos of their set up and work so that I and othes can try to help. I will try to provide my own set up and photos when time allows.
John T. Maybe we should plan a get toghether to photograph some of your fishing gear. Then we can work out the solutions to the problems together. Give me a call some time.

 

[Dave Roller]

I would like to know how to get my photos from ny desktop to a post here on the forum.

 

[john lucas]

I am certainly not an expert here. You do need a way to size the photos to fit the maximum size and that's where I am at a loss unless you are using PHotoshop. Hopefully someone else can help with that. To attempt to load the photos simply start a post or reply. The go down below where is says additional options, click on manage attachments. It will bring up a window that has a browse button. Click on this and then find your image on the desktop. Click on the image and then tell it to upload. You'll see it come up as a file extension. Then simply finish the message and click submit or if you want click on preview to see how it worked. If the file is too large it will tell you.
That's the best I can do. Give it a try and if it doesn't work get back with us. Maybe someone can help.

 

[Dave Roller]

OK. Here's are my pictures of two maple bowls and a cherry bowl. Thanks to Ed Davidson and John Lucas for their help with the picture upload.

 

[john lucas]

Dave What kind of lights and diffusers are you using. could you post a photo of your set up. I can see that you are trying to change the intensity of the lights so they aren't really flat looking. That's a good thing but you could go a little further.
Mostly it's a problem of the main (or brightest light) being too low. That produces the glare on the back left. If you move the light up the glare will go down and eventually far enough down to be hidden by the front lip of the bowl. This could cause the front of the bowl to be darker which may be good or bad. It would be bad if the details you want to see are in the front. Good if the details are inside. Having the inside either darker or lighter than the outside creates the illusion of depth and that's what we are after.
I would fill the frame more so the bowls are larger and if possible figure out a way to make the files larger so we can see more detail.
The black velour background eliminates the problems of shadows but I've never been a fan of the wrinkled look. That however is a personal choice so do as you please. Even as dark as it is your eyes still glance at the wrinkles and the idea is to keep your eyes on the bowl. A smooth background does this better than a wrinkled. Yours doesn't look bad and if you can't get the wrinkles out then I'd go with it.
Your exposure and color look correct. Over all a good photograph. Minor improvements would take it to the next level.
I may have time to shoot a bowl on Monday. I'll do it on our black velour and try to show the differences I'm talking about.

 

[Dave Roller]

John, I have no idea the set up used to do the photographs I posted. My wife did them where she used to work when I was selecting something to put on my calling card.

I had to find a spot online to reduce the size down to the acceptable level for this forum and almost did not post them after going through that process--I don't think they look nearly as good as the originals. The originals were @ 1.5 mb and you can see how much I had to cut them down. I'll look to see if you have a public email and if so, I'll send the originals to you for your comments.

I'm just happy that I can now upload photos. I may try putting these on the forum photograph site. Thanks for your help and suggestions.

 

[john lucas]

Dave Here are some examples of what I am talking about. The first shot is a bowl with one light coming from my right and higher than the bowl. It is a soft box about 1x 1 1/2 feet. Not a bad photo but the piece is kind of flat looking and there is an obnoxious highlight.

In the second photo I move the light above and slightly behind the bowl. This lights the interior and moves the reflection down into the bottom below the rim so you can't see it. Obviously this doesn't do justice to the front of the bowl.

In the 3rd photo I added a white board to the left just out of the frame. I angled it to pick up the light and bounce it back into the front. Then I took an 8x10 mirror and bounced light back into the right side of the bowl. This leave the front slightly darker than the inside and creates a more 3 dimensional look.

I am using a large piece of Velour background material and smoothed it out so there aren't any wrinkles. The background was spread out so it's quite far from the bowl consequently it goes completely black. The downside of the velour is that the bowl kind of floats in space.

What I intended to show in this set up is that you should try to make it easy to move your lights. You can often eliminate or at least decrease some of the problems by simply moving the light around. Think of it like shooting billiards. In the first shot the light bounces off the back of the bowls right back at the camera. In the second shot I move the light so it would bounce up but also the reflection is now down below the rim so the camera doesn't see it. By moving the lights you move where the reflection is. The size of the lights affects the size of the reflection. Small lights create hard edge very bright hot spots and large lights, like umbrellas and soft boxes create soft edge less harsh highlights.

 

[john lucas]

Galen Vetterick's Images

Galen sent me an image of this bowl and we discussed improvements that might help. The first most obvious was the color shift. He was using tungsten lights. The camera's auto setting did not fully correct for the lighting and the image is very orange. I suggested he set the White Balance to the tungsten setting.
What we found out is his camera can be set to tungsten lighting but when you turn it off it reverts back to Auto which in this case was incorrect. My little camera does the same thing and it's a hassle to set it to tungsten each time I need that feature. That's where the SLR cameras shine because they will usually let you set the white balance and it will stay there.
The other 2 suggestions were to move in closer to better fill the frame and to set the image quality higher. I also suggested setting up the background differently to get rid of the various lines that cut through the photo. As a further suggestion to get rid of the horizon line in the background I suggested using a white window shade or possibly a piece of poster board that is taped and curved. Of course seamless paper is a good choice as well. The whole idea is to take away anything that pulls your eye away from the piece. A good clean background does this.

As you can see in the second photo the differences make it much easier for us to enjoy his work. I didn't change any settings in photoshop I only changed the sizes to fit in the new frame.
Great job Galen, on the photo and the bowl

 

[Richard Shelby]

I know it's an old thread, but I'm struggling with photos, particularly the shiny pieces. I've tried moving the lights around but still get quite a lot of glare. The lights are regular incandescents, mostly bounced off the white cieling. Any constructive criticism is welcome. Thanks in advance.... Richard

ve

 

[Bill Boehme]

I know it's an old thread, but I'm struggling with photos, particularly the shiny pieces. I've tried moving the lights around but still get quite a lot of glare. The lights are regular incandescents, mostly bounced off the white cieling. Any constructive criticism is welcome. Thanks in advance.... Richard

Richard, you don't want to eliminate all reflections because like shadows they add depth to the image. I have some suggestions about your lighting set up:

• The blue background paper will reflect onto the turning just as shining a blue light would. I would suggest using a neutral background. In photography the term neutral means that it has no color whatsoever, so what you would look for is a gray background that isn't brown gray or blue gray, but just pure gray. You might want a light gray, medium gray, or dark gray depending on what you are shooting. I prefer a darker gray background because light gray backgrounds will bounce light onto the turning and create a washed out appearance.
• There is mixed lighting in your set up ... daylight through the window and two incandescent lights. The daylight probably has a color temperature of 5000K to 6000K while the light bulbs have a color temperature around 2700K so the side of the turning facing the window will receive light that is a different color than the other side. Also bouncing the light off the ceiling and walls will further alter the color as well as scattering the light too much. Mixed lighting will prevent you from getting a good white balance. I now use just a single light source which can be seen in my post HERE. I really like the LED light that I got at Rockler Hardware. I use an umbrella to diffuse the light, but you could use waxed paper or a white bed sheet.
• If the tripod location in your picture is at the normal shooting distance, I think that is too close. If you are using a point and shoot camera, zoom it to the longest optical focal length and back up several feet to nicely frame the image. Then set the aperture to somewhere in the range of f/8 to f/16 if your camera will allow you to use aperture priority shooting.
• You can use white bounce cards to soften shadows and black "gobo's" (go between cards) to block light where you don't want it. Here is an example of a shiny turning that I shot using the set up referenced above. The shadows and highlights both add depth to the image.

The only problem that I have with this image is the graduated background paper is too light at the bottom so it is reflecting a white haze onto the lower part of the turning.

Just like in woodturning, photography is a never ending learning process. I've learned a lot from John Lucas, Jamie Donaldson, other photographers, and a bookshelf full of books on the subject.

 

[Owen Lowe]

Using the ceiling as a giant reflector is a common practice, but that light to the left is way too close to it. Drop it down a few feet but not so far as to allow its light to fall directly on the background paper. As it is now, the light retains too much of a hot-spot quality -- you want the light to fill the ceiling as evenly as possible. I'd also move it to the position of the brass light. This will keep the highly reflective areas away from being directly in front of the viewer.

Secondly I'd eliminate any second light and shoot at night (or completely block the window). This will simplify the light falling on the turning and have only one color temperature in the image, as Bill commented. The single light source will likely necessitate using a couple of white poster board-like cards to the front and front left/right of the camera to bounce light into the lower surface of the turning. Cut a full size poster board in half and you've got what you need.

If you're willing to try this and reshoot & post the vase turning we can then go from there.

 

[Richard Shelby]

Thanks all. I've got work to do.

 

[Gerald Lawrence]

• There is mixed lighting in your set up ... daylight through the window and two incandescent lights. The daylight probably has a color temperature of 5000K to 6000K while the light bulbs have a color temperature around 2700K so the side of the turning facing the window will receive light that is a different color than the other side. Also bouncing the light off the ceiling and walls will further alter the color as well as scattering the light too much. Mixed lighting will prevent you from getting a good white balance. I now use just a single light source which can be seen in my post HERE. I really like the LED light that I got at Rockler Hardware. I use an umbrella to diffuse the light, but you could use waxed paper or a white bed sheet.

Bill, Which shop light did you use the small or large?

 

[Bill Boehme]

I used the large one. I liked it so much that I now have four of them. The design has changed a bit. The reflector is now smaller diameter and deeper. The price has dropped considerably.

 

[Richard Shelby]

Gray backdrop 2700K LED / 5000K LED
Bounced off cieling

 

[Chris Short]

Richard - when I post to the net, I always sharpen/ slightly over-sharpen the image. I reckon it might work well on those two (nicely lit, IMO) photos.