For these photos we used a white sheet, plexiglass, and a few photo processing tools. The first part of the trick was the setup. The set up was simple, two photography strobes with softboxes, a white sheet set low so it covered the floor (though I could have just as easily used two sheets for this), and a piece of plexiglass over the sheet on the floor. For the record, both Home Depot and Lowes have precut plexiglass for sell.
The second part of the trick is in the photo processing tools. I use Adobe Lightroom though the other options out there likely have similar software tools. So, I started off by making the typical processing adjustments; exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, dehaze, and vibrance.
Okay side knowledge here, in Lightroom there is vibrance and there is saturation. Vibrance is built to try and have minimal impact on skin tones whereas Saturation affects all colors. This difference is important because skin tones tend to include yellows, oranges, and even reds. It’s all weird. On the few occasions I’ve had to bring out the green in grass, I pretty much always start with YELLOW and usually that’s all I have to adjust. Same with skin tones. This just makes me think grass and humans are both share the trait of being weird.
Back to the post though, after I made all the usual adjustments, I then went to the Adjustment brush, set the feathering to 52, and set the exposure, highlights, shadow, blacks, and whites to 100. This would make all whites that brush touches extremely white while the feathering, for the most part, allowed the rest of the photo to remain untouched. Then I just applied it to the white areas while avoiding the reflection. And that’s it. No need for a massive studio or a painted white photo area. Just a little work and patience and it all works out well.