Something To Celebrate

In one of the last few days of Dec 2014, I was able to do one last product shot that I can say is one of my best creative product shots. Shown on the left is a teaser photo that I posted sometime January 2015 that can also be seen in this link.

When my wife bought and surprised me with this beer, I was very happy and I remember having this smile in my face I can't wipe off. This is because I have something to photograph and I have something to drink after -- Cheers!

Every time there's something new around is always a good opportunity to get some product shots. First, they're somewhat at their "best" look and if it's beer and liquor it's best while it has still contents.

Going back to the image, it took me several days to think about how to photograph this beer bottle. Since it was the holidays and the spirit of celebration was in the air, I was aiming to have something to get that feeling in the photo at the end.

The teaser image on it's own is good in my opinion and can be used as is. It's simple but I wasn't getting the celebratory feeling in this image so I had to slowly build on it.

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?