Photographing Metalwork- HELP!

[Valadilene]

I have a contract job photographing a whole bunch of equipment and machinery for training manuals.. and I dont have much practice photographing metal and chrome in a way that prevents glare. Its not something I can use a light tent fore, these are pieces of large devices that I cannot remove. How should I go about lighting stuff like this is avoid glare off the shiny metal?

[stine]

hey there, congrats on the job!
i don't have that much experience photographing metal, either, but i would probably work with a lot of transparent paper (or maybe even thin fabric) in front of the lamps.
another thing you might try is taking sort of HDR shots of the metal or using the "shadow/highlight" adjustment in there. and then masking the glares out in photoshop. portrait photographers do that sometimes in case the highlights on the hair etc got blown out to tone them down again.

wish you all the best for your job, hope there was something in here that you hadn't thought about yourself...

[klips]

Pick up a copy of Light, Science and Magic and read the section in there on it then adapt to a larger scale. You'll be set!

[Valadilene]

i hadn't thought of using HDR, I don't have much experience with it, but it sounds like an interesting and useful process..thanks!

klips- whos the author?

[klips]

http://www.amazon.com/Light-Science-Introduction-Photographic-Lighting/dp/0240808193/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212560686&sr=8-1