Got Milk?

I didn't get to Tynehead today. I guess I was just a bit too tired from work. So instead this evening I experimented shooting shiny stuff with a flash. I used a black tea cup with some flowers painted on. 

I wanted to see if I could get pictures of it without hot spots on it from the flash. I also wanted to see how it would differ with a black background and a white one. 

click for the results. 
I started with the black background because the black backdrop is huge and more work to set up.

 I wanted to live by the one flash theory but it quickly became obvious that wasn't working for me in this instance. Put a Vivitar 285 high up shooting through a white umbrella and point down to light up the inside of the cup. I had to place it directly left of the cup because if I had it forward at all the gold trim inside got hot spots. The painted flowers on the outside of the cup became very dark so I put another 285 with my Lumiquest Soft Box III just to right of the camera and low so it didn't light up the inside of the cup. I don't think this particular item was too hard a challenge but I have to start somewhere with what I have. 

 Turns out this was very similar to light. I pointed the flash on the left side more to the back to light it up and the one on the right was about the same. Both were shot at 1/125 the dark one f22 and the light one f18. My speedlight hero Dave Hobby shoots manual adjusting his settings as he goes. I never thought I could figure that out but I'm sort of getting it now I think. It's great with digital, you can see what you're getting as you go. With film of course you had to measure all the flashes to make sure it was right before you sent it to the lab, because you didn't get to see what you did till long past it was done. 
I bet you're wondering why the title of this post. 

 Ha ha