For anyone interested in lighting techniques for "difficult" surfaces, including glass, I'd recommend the excellent "Light Science & Magic" by Paul Fuqua & Fill Hunter: https://www.amazon.com/Light-Science-Magic-Introduction-Phot...

Photographic lighting is such an overlooked skill. Commercial photographers spend years crafting this skill. You can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just on lighting, where one umbrella reflector, with no electronics, can cost $11k.

Here's an example of an iPhone product shot: https://fstoppers.com/video/bts-how-apples-product-photograp...

Each specular highlight & complementary shadow contrast is put in on purpose, with its own lighting/card/reflector.

Really interesting. Even as an enthusiast photographer it's easy to overlook the amount of skill and work that goes into shots like this.

For anyone interested, Dustin Dolby's (aka Workphlo) YouTube channel provides lots of information on product photography on a budget

https://www.youtube.com/user/DustinDolby

Just commenting to add this wonderfully succinct summary of the post by John Overholt:

>It takes a tremendous amount of work to make the work that goes into photographing this goblet invisible.

https://twitter.com/john_overholt/status/991110369082068992