Tag Archives: studio

Wine bottle photography – harsh lessons in relectivity

After my series of Easter Egg Photos, earlier this week, I decided to clear out my ‘collection’ of wine bottles. I keep them, to remind me which wines I liked. Some are quality, some are just a good value (consumable on the cheap).

Combining my desire to clear out a corner of my kitchen, and learn a little more about lighting, reflection and studio product photography, I put together this little experiment.

I quickly learned that shooting objects with high reflectivity, such as glass, is much more difficult to manage than other images. You’ll notice the lighting umbrellas, the wall colors, even a few have reflections of myself in the wine glass.

Some have a large bright reflection on the bottom of the glass. It turns out the white floor in the shop really reflects light well, and shows up on the glass. Putting down an extra black backdrop on the floor took care of that. But the sides and background beyond the camera remained an issue. I have white and yellow curtains there. I guess I need to get black for that as well. Just another set of lessons learned.

The photos are also uploaded to my Flickr account with additional comments on each wine. I’ll copy those comments, and add more info later. For how, I’ll just provide the pics.

McWilliams Cabernet Sauvignon 2007



Wine 2



Wine 3



Wine 4



Wine 6



Wine 7



Wine 8



Wine 9



Wine 10



Wine 11



Wine 12



Wine 13



As you can see in the photos, having a totally solid color, or black studio would produce a better image. That and adjusting the camera to a deeper field of focus. But, this why I’m doing this. To learn those lessons, hone my craft, and have a little fun at the same time.

Color studies for new backdrops

Having a photo shoot coming up next week, I want to create a couple of new backdrops. The shoot will once again focus on the yellow Ducati. Today I’m working with some rough masks in Photoshop to get an idea of what backdrop colors I should work on creating next.

This will take a few hours to work though. First I’m working on some basic background tinting. Once I get an idea of what my eye likes, I’ll break out my color books (a favorite of mine is the Jim Krause’s Color Index 2) and find tune the pallets looking for the best complimentary colors. Creating the backdrops is not an exact science (at least for me), so having a perfect color target is meaningless. It serves as a goal for dye an base fabric color selection.

These are a couple of the images I’ve created so far to get an idea of what direction to go in.

color_study_original

⇐ Original

color_study_purple color_study_midnightsea
color_study_maroon color_study_darkgreen
color_study_redbright color_study_purpleelectric