After getting a spark of inspiration while looking at a jar of pickles, I decided to build a small rig with some extra wood I had in my garage. The crux of it is a black backdrop, a black floor with glass on top of it and a hole, allowing me to place a flash pointing upward. With this rig in place, I did a series of photos of various bottled and jarred items. The idea was to see how these things would look if lit from within.
I used two flashes—one through an umbrella that also bounced off the left side, and the other underneath the “floor” pointing through the object I was photographing.
Here are the final photographs.
And for those interested, here’s a not-so-great photo of the set-up I built (using some wood and black paint from Home Depot, totaling about $40):
