I'm doing some photos of wallets and purses that primarily will be
viewed in an online catalog, but may also be used in print. The lighter
colored leather seems to coming out OK, but the brown and black leather
is coming out like a solid dark blotch. Is there some trick to lighting
this that won't cause tons of glare off of the leather while bringing
out the leather itself? you can take a look here

http://petros.pl/Galleries/Sagan/index.html


when photographing black you want a huge soft diffuse hightlight that you
expose for. black is black, texture is revealed in the highlight. So in a
sense, you WANT glare. Normally glare is a blocked up highlight that kills
detail, but with black textured items its the only thing that shows it.

to break up the reflected hightlight, take a piece of black tape across your
light source or reflector.