Shooting glass is its own beast, but when you can pull off this high key look, the results are elegant and well worth the effort. Here's how to shoot glassware on white using only a single light.
Product photography is difficult stuff, but this quick tutorial offers a great walkthrough of a classic high key shot. Dustin Dolby grabs a single strip box and uses it to photograph stemware, giving it a very clean look. Dolby actually notes that a kit lens set at f/13 and a camera set to ISO 100 (if your flash has sufficient power) would be his "ideal setup," so we're not talking about expensive gear here. He shows how varying the distance of the strip box changes the thickness of the outline of the glass, which is of course crucial to ensuring that the transparent subject doesn't get lost among the white. He also shows a few other helpful tricks: cloning and flipping the glass across the vertical axis for perfect symmetry, using a flag to introduce a bit more edge definition, stacking glasses upside down to fake reflections, and adjusting the strip box vertically to even out dark spots. Altogether, it's an informative and easily replicated tutorial.
simple solution with really neat outcome, thanks for finding these cool videos, Alex !