Shiny Surfaces

Well this exercise was one way to get the housework done. I had to polish the tarnished silver egg cup to get the sheen back. The first part of the exercise was to take a photo of a shiny object on black velvet. The image below was taken with daylight coming from windows either side.

I then attempted to make a cone with a sheet of gel. The result is below:

I repeated with a light at the side.

My cone was crumpling in the last shot so i have a bit of colour cast.  However the point of the exercise was to see how to deal with reflections. The ideal for photographing this eggcup would be to use a tent designed for just such a purpose. Lighting outside the tent to keep the cup shiny blocking unwanted reflections.
I'll try and rig up something that will do a better job than my crumpling cone. Although the images aren't ideal i have grasped the principal in how to deal with unwanted reflections.