Help with flash for a specialty shot

I took a series of these last year, shot with a strobe in an umbrella 90 degrees to the camera aimed at the work. As you can see below you can clearly see the light source in the image. I am thinking of re-shooting the image using a strobe bounced off a white ceiling about 5' above. The question is do you think that will give even lighting or just even glare everywhere? Also would you use just a reflector on the strobe or a modifier such as a soft box?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …thwoods_photo/8​525328663/

I think what you want to do is to illuminate the dice below but not the glass surface that the water droplets are on. Presuming that you're 'overhead' looking down on the glass, I'd be surprised if the bounced light off the ceiling approach would provide sufficient illumination to the dice and I'd expect it to reflect the illuminated ceiling in the surface of the droplets. You might try putting a card on the glass surface to block the umbrella reflection with the set up that you currently have.

I think you need to light from a position not in the family of angles reflected by the drops. I think a ceiling bounce would likely have a larger reflection than the umbrella.

This will be easier if you ditch the umbrella (maybe even use a snoot to minimise the size of the light source) and place the flash(es) low enough to not be reflected - I would think at a height somewhere between the dice and the glass. I know quality of light will suffer with a smaller light source, which probably won't matter too much in the scenario, and maybe could be eased with some fill.

Please post results of your next shoot!

There is a good tutorial on Kelby Training about this sort of macro photography.
Its been awhile since I did anything like this but, as FG says, the key is lighting the subject below the glass. The water droplets are acting as lenses so they are transmitting the light from below. As well as the light reflected by the background through the transparent material the water is on.

Great, thanks for the responses. It will likely be a while before I can try this again but I do promise to post the results. Now it is off to Kelby to see if I can find the video. I am in northern NH so we are heading into 5 months or so of winter, time for some macro work!

Northwoods Bill wrote in post #16325615
Great, thanks for the responses. It will likely be a while before I can try this again but I do promise to post the results. Now it is off to Kelby to see if I can find the video. I am in northern NH so we are heading into 5 months or so of winter, time for some macro work!

Its a macro class with Fortney as the instructor. Close-Up: Continuing in Macro Photography

Found it. Thanks!