Star Glass: a star filter AI photoshoot
Star Glass is a bright mid-2000s advertising tableau where every glint on glass, bubbles and silver becomes a thin four-point star. Clear spheres hang at different depths around the figure on a cyclorama that fades from pale sky blue to white.
Art direction: Alex But
- Camera
- Digital medium format
- Lens
- 50 mm
- Aperture
- f/8
- Shutter
- 1/125 s
- Filter
- 4-point star
- Light
- Overhead softbox + pinpoint strobes
Best for
Six frames from this shoot
Five frames and one detail, made by haloshot from three phone photos of one person.
Frame 1 · Star Glass 
Frame 2 · Star Glass 
Frame 3 · Star Glass 
Frame 4 · Star Glass 
Frame 5 · Star Glass 
Detail · Star Glass
About the star filter look
A large overhead softbox and a white bounce wall keep the light high-key and nearly shadowless. Two small hard strobes at the sides have a separate job: they put pinpoint highlights on every sphere and snap, and the star filter on the 50 mm lens draws each one out into a cross. Digital medium format at f/8 and 1/125 s holds the near spheres sharp and freezes drifting bubbles.
Clothes, place and when to pick it
For this set haloshot builds two wardrobes: women get a cropped white padded gilet over a pearl-gray mock-neck and a silver-white tunic panel, men a glossy high-collar gilet over pale-gray knit. Silver wide trousers, ice-blue glasses and a clear acrylic cuff carry through both. It is a built studio tableau, good for a brand site with your face at the center.
How it works
Add three photos of yourself: face, half turn and full length. haloshot renders a free five-frame preview of Star Glass with your face. Pick the frames you like and keep them in 4:5 HD.
How to get four-point star glints with a star filter
A star filter is glass etched with a fine grid that spreads each bright point into rays, so it needs hard speculars against soft light.
- Light a white cyclorama with pale blue gels low and white high, and hang glass spheres on monofilament at varied depths.
- Key from a large overhead softbox and bounce wall, adding two small hard side strobes for pinpoint highlights.
- Fit a four-point star filter to the 50 mm lens at f/8 and 1/125 s from 3 to 4 m, rotating it to aim the rays.
- Run a bubble machine off-set and fire as bubbles cross, keeping every star off the face.
Mop bubble fluid off the floor between takes; it makes a cyclorama slippery.
Set notes by Alex But, art director · Updated
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Shoot Star Glass with your face
Three photos in, five free preview frames out. Keep the best ones in HD.