Something Is Brewing

Last night on my way home, I passed by a convenience store looking for something to drink with my expected dinner. While looking around the beverage area, I saw this bottle of beer I don't recall ever seeing before. It had an interesting label and I thought it would be a good opportunity to photograph it and make something nice. As I continued on my way, my mind was thinking of how to make this more interesting then an "Aha!" moment occurred.

When I got home, I did some research on how to do what I wanted to do while I ate dinner. Didn't exactly found what I was looking for but there were some very helpful stuff in the Internet. After filling up my tummy with food and my mind with ideas, I started to set up and as usual, I do a test shot which I posted last night which is also shown below.

Something's Brewing...

My setup has been fairly consistent on how I generally light my beer and liquor bottles. Most of my previous shots would involve white or colored (with gradient) backgrounds. For this session, I've always wanted to do something with dark or black background.

Now that's the tricky part and that's why I stay away from doing it but last night I had no excuse. I had to make it work or else I could have stopped after I got the image above after four or five shots.

I pressed on to get what I want.

The final image I had in mind, is a combination of different experiences that I was able to write about here in this blog. How to put it all together in one shot was a real challenge.

First, I had to consider my limited gear and how I can maximize it. For the image above, it used all my lights which is two. One light served as a main light and the other as a background light. The background light will also serve as a source of light so the interior of the bottle so it will be lit and make it translucent. So that's how the above image was lit.

The background of the final image that I wanted should be dark or black. Easy solution -- don't light the background but this will mean I will also lose the light I need for the interior of the bottle. I could do it in post processing by combining two images and masking out the darkened bottle. It's an option but I didn't want to go that way as there's another element in the shot that I wanted to add -- smoke, steam, or fog.

This element needs to be lit from behind so the particles of smoke will bounce of light and the dark background will help it be visible and be captured in the camera. So again, I can still do it in post processing by combining one to three images: 1) beer bottle, 2) dark background, and 3) smoke. Again, I wanted to minimize post processing and wanted some thing like I have produced below:

Hot or Cold? Click on the photo for a larger view.

I did some post processing but was mostly to tweak the smoke elements of the shot. I could have been satisfied with an actual one shot but wanted more control over the uncontrollable motion of the smoke.

Brewed and served cold.

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