Bubbly

A bubbly photo session with a personalized gift my wife and I received from friend from the recent holidays.

Trying to make simple things look sexy and elegant.

One shot. Two lights. A lot of bubbles.

Great or Lucky?

After a couple of weeks without taking photos, I decided to take some tonight. I jumped out of bed and grabbed my usual gear. I setup my subject and gear and took some test shots. Eight clicks then it's a wrap! Batteries went empty. Both my batteries drained out of their power.

I reviewed the few test shots that I got. I was able to select two shots out of the eight as usable. One of them is shown below. You know which one is the other from the series of thumbnails above I guess.

Great or Lucky Shot?

I did great. I got lucky. What do you think?

Cheers!

P.S.
Get back to the basics -- check your gear! :)

Photo Progression

One of the best beers for me. Shall we drink?

Here's sneak peak of how I progressed with the photo.

And an extra shot.

Related Posts:

• Water Drops and Splashes

Third Bottle

I'm lucky that I am still sober after this third bottle of liquor. I'm in the momentum to shoot bottles of liquor due to the lighting setup that I did for the bottle of rakia in "Stress Reliever" article that I recently did.

I have applied here some of the things I learned from the past two recent sessions and they are:

1. Stress Reliever - change the background color while shooting and
2. Second Look - position of the main light to be on the left side of the camera

So, changing the background while shooting or taking the photo saved me a lot of time to do it in post production. It's also better to do it this way especially for dark bottles like this bottle of wine. There's a slim chance that the light from the background would cast on the liquor. It would be a case-to-case basis and I'll leave that to your experimentation.

The color of light on the background was done by "gelling" the flash head. I used an amber-orange piece of gel. Another piece of DIY presented in "Flash Gels And New Shoes".

Positioning the main light on the left side of the bottle created a more natural feel to it rather than having the main light on the right side. I placed a reflector on the right side that can be roughly seen on the reflection of the bottle.

I'm looking forward into shooting more bottles of liquor when I can find and borrow them. I think there'll be a lot especially that the holidays is fast approaching.

Now, the search for new bottles is on!

Cheers!

Second Look

Recently, I shot a bottle of Rakia from Bulgaria (Stress Reliever) which proved to be really tricky to shoot. I reused the light setup to take another take on the vodka bottle that I shot a few months back when I was "Reviving The Kit" lens.

Light Diagram from the Rakia Bottle shot

I'd show the vodka bottle that was shot a few months back and the a few weeks ago side-by-side. I'd love to hear what you think is better.

Reviving The Kit

Second Look

So, what do you think is better?

Stress Reliever

Looking back at my archives, it's been awhile since I last did something and wrote something that involved photography. These past few weekends, I have been a little busy with it again and it started with the photo below. Click on "Read more >>" below for more details about the shot.

Rakia

Reviving The Kit

It's been more than three years since I replaced my kit lens (Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS) due to busted AF function. I rarely use it right now and usually I resort to it when I do macro photography via reverse ring or tube extensions.

I tried to use it as the primary lens for my project this weekend and tried to check and see how it still performs on product photography that I have been doing for several weekends now.

Toblerone

Flash Gels And New Shoes

Recently my wife and my kids gave me a new pair of shoes for Father's Day. Anything new is a good opportunity for some product shots as the subjects are still in their best condition. It is also a good chance to try something new, experiment with some stuff, and practice photography.

Thank you to them for fueling me with these.

Project Glassware

There's a craze going on with glassware specifically about glass jars for preserving foods for jams, juices, etc. and so I've decided to shoot some and try to ride the band wagon.

"Ball MASON" jar

The Dream Car

My youngest daughter fancies the same car as I do. :)

Minimal post production: white balance correction, some highlight recovery and a little polishing on the car. Star burst on headlamps and and flare are on-cam.

This is a 15-second exposure shot so I can register those weak led headlamps on the car.

Vrooooooooooom!

Gel Balls and Auto-enhance Fail

Here another personal product shot project  I worked on showcasing a watch and some gel balls or water gels used in plants about two weeks ago I think. I finished cleaning the image up about early this week only and had some fail moment with auto-enhance feature in my favorite image repository.

Us In 2014

Trying out this photo inspiration: http://500px.com/photo/18139723.

Cheers to 2014!

Chicken Buffalo

Recently, my wife's Chicken Buffalo has been a hit!

The first time I brought my wife's version of Chicken Buffalo in our office was during my birthday celebration. Actually, all the food that was prepared were given all a thumbs up but the Chicken Buffalo stood up from the rest and had repeat orders.