Shiny surfaces

This exercise looked at dealing with the challenge of photographing objects with surfaces that reflect brightly - a problem that I've experienced on a number of occasions previously but not worked how to achieve a decent result. I chose a brass lid placed on the floor to photograph and set up a tripod and a light positioned close to the camera. I took a couple of photographs for reference:

P401:  f36 @ 1/3sec  ISO 3200  55mm - side light

P402: f36 @ 1/3sec  ISO 3200  55mm - overhead light

I then created a cone out of tracing paper and fixed the tapering end around the lens of the camera. The difference that this made to the resulting photographs was significant:

P403: f5.6 @ 1/3sec  ISO 3200  55mm

The cone did reduce the reflection significantly but to my mind the lid became flatter and lost some interest so I experimented further by moving the position and angle of the light to see if this added anything to the image:

P404 : f36 @ 1/3sec  ISO 3200  55mm  +  side light

P405:  f36 @ 1/sec  ISO 3200  55mm + light in front 

In P405 above the lighting revealed some texture which I quite liked.

P406: f36 @ 1/3sec  ISO 3200  55mm + light in front @ 45 degree angle 

P407: f36 @ 1/3sec  ISO 3200 + light above at 45 degree andle down from the left

In P406 and P407, the lighting is more intrusive..in P406 it reveals some texture on the handle and some shadow whereas in P406 the glare from the light source distracts..