Unsuccessful Underlit Lightbox Shots

Decided to try some underlighting after seeing an on-line acquaintance play with it. Don't think my rube goldberg set up was really up to the task but it was fun to play with it. I basically used a piece of 8x12 glass laid between two Xerox Boxes. With various amounts of paper and tissue in strategic places to adjust how much light came through. I think I really need to do it in a soft box type setting with some side lighting too. Hmmm...

Here is my set up from the shooting side. There is a optical slave trigger on the flash triggered by the flash on my camera reflected away from the subject by tinfoil.

And from the back side.

A non manipulated shot, no post processing done at all, note the crooked camera!

Non HDR with a hand held flash off to the side triggering the underflash.

HDR processed shot similar to above and straightened and the glass edge cloned out.

This is a Caithness Glass Paperweight, I decided to shoot at the same time.

And the HDR version, I don't think HDR works as well for this as I would have liked.