If you want to play with light, just to see how it behaves, and you’re short of space and equipment, simply scale things down.
This liqueur glass was back-lit by no other light than that coming from my laptop's screen. The room was dark. I drew the virtual "roll-paper" blue background and the yellow "spotlight splash" in Photoshop, using only very basic tools. Any other similar digital image editing application would have done. The rest should be obvious from the setup pictured below. I stood my point-and-shoot camera on a couple of books to raise the lens to the height I wanted. The glass was standing on a dark brown, leather-bound book.
The result certainly doesn’t bear comparison with what a real studio shoot would have given, but it does show you how studying the behaviour of light (at very low cost) can lead you towards more success in creating the kinds of images you want to make.
Above: room lighting switched back on to show everything.
Above: screen shot of dark blue to light blue gradient background and a big, softly brushed yellow blob.
