Here is a nice clean shot of a Jackson-Triggs champagne bottle with flute.
Oct 09
I’ve been working on a lot of shoots with glass lately. Glass is particularly difficult to shoot, especially curved glass surfaces like that of a bottle. It acts as a mirror, seeing everything around it, so it becomes an exercise in controlling light in every detail.
Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at how I shot this bottle of Hennessy Cognac with a glass. This diagram shows an overhead view of the lighting setup – the Hennessy bottle is the circle with the star on it.
I used two light sources mounted behind a very large sheet of white plexi, sand-blasted on the side facing the set. The bottle of Hennessy was sitting on a large piece of oak. I wanted to completely back-light the bottle so the liquid would tend to glow and I wouldn’t show any reflections on the front of the bottle. I knew I was going to use a series of shots to create the final composited image.
The black gobos are used to cut the light coming from the large sheet of plexi – that allowed me to control exactly where the light was going to fall. The gobo behind the set in the frame of the shot was a section of black velvet – it’s still the best at absorbing light.
So, here’s the first shot of the set – for the bottle details, the glass behind it, and the lighting along the left edge of the bottle.
The gobos make sure the thin strip of light down the left side of the bottle doesn’t migrate too far forward. If the left gobo were removed, you’d get a large, wide white strip down the left side of the bottle – resulting from the reflection of the white plexi behind the set.
The gobo to the right of the bottle cuts any light that may be reflecting around the room. Since it’s glass, it’ll see any light in the room that is strong enough. The gobo kills any of that ambient light.
Finally, the gobo beside the camera is cutting the light from hitting the lens. It is blocking the light from the plexi sheet coming from the strobe to the left, and it is also cutting the light from the strobe behind the plexi to the right. If that gobo were not there, I’d get lens flare.
Next step is to light the labels.
That is done in two separate shots – one to light the main labels on the front of the bottle, and a second shot to light the cap.
To do that, I used a sheet of silver florentine and bounced the light back onto the front of the label. Silver florentine is just like a shiny piece of thin cardboard – great for reflecting light.
You have to be patient with positioning the card – you want the light to bounce from above and down, so you don’t get shiny reflections on the label. You also want to make sure the light is bouncing along the labels in the same location, otherwise it would look like the labels were each shot separately.
In the last shot, I placed a large sheet of silver florentine behind the bottle and positioned it so it would reflect the light from the white plexi toward the camera.
This shot will be used to illuminate the liquid in the final composite.
It’s important to fill the entire width of the bottle with light so all the liquid is lit up, being careful not to leave black gaps along either side of the bottle.
It’s also important to make sure the silver florentine card isn’t moved too far forward on the right side of the bottle, otherwise it will reflect on the front of the bottle and ruin the overall shot.
Remember not to adjust any of the settings on the camera – you don’t want to alter the aperture, otherwise it will make compositing the shots later virtually impossible. Keep everything the same from shot to shot, and be careful not to move the bottle.
Once all the pieces are shot and ready, you then composite them together to create one final shot. Here is the result.
Aug 30
I got totally inspired by a stop-motion video clip a friend e-mailed me, showing how Peter Belanger shot the iPhone cover for MacWorld. I really like his approach, showing more of the setup and post-production.
So I decided to brush up on my Final Cut skills and build my own video, piecing together the shots from my earlier post, showing how we progressed through the cosmetic shot for a client.
The video shows about 2 and a half hours of work compressed into 30 seconds. Enjoy!
Aug 25
It’s fun to look back at the shots taken on a shoot, to see how we progressed from the initial quick shots, through refinement, to the final shot. In this post, I will show you how we worked our way through a cosmetic shot.
Our brief called for a bright, natural looking shot of cosmetics, with an antique feel. We needed to use robin’s egg blue in the shot, and highlight a few of the cosmetic products provided by the client.
To keep things looking natural, we used natural light, back-lit from a window. Here was the first shot – throwing a few things onto the set to see how they’d look in the given light.
Shot #1
The shot is under-exposed, but gave us an idea of how the products would look together. The big problem is the various sizes of the cosmetics and the different finishes (milky plastic, clear plastic, and tin).
We next tried opening up some of the products and looking at them from a different angle. Here’s where we went next:
Shot #2
Not overly motivating – this mix of products was going to take some time to work out. The product in the tins was of a very neutral palette – which was in contrast to the white cream in the high plastic container, and the brighter colours in the tiny plastic containers. This higher angle shot confirmed the challenge of getting the products working together from a colour stand-point.
Shot #3
The under-exposure doesn’t make it as apparent, but the contents of the various containers still weren’t going to work together. We added the powder to the mix – but it was similar to the products on the left in terms of palette neutrality. We tried accessorizing, moving the products around, adding new ones, removing existing ones, but finally realized it wasn’t going to work and we had to try something different.
So we abandoned the setup and started with a fresh perspective, and came up with this:
Shot #4
Now we’re starting off better – we used an old flaking mirror with a robin’s egg blue sheet under the mirror. Still using natural light, but we can see real promise in this direction. Luckily, the client was in agreement that we needed to abandon the dark surface used in the first shots.
Our next challenge – introduce more elements and see if we can get them looking great together. Here’s where we ended up next:
Shot #5
You can see the challenge in trying to get these products looking great together. They are different enough to be challenging, but we knew that with enough work, we could make it work. We started moving products around, taking some out of their containers, pouring them about, and accessorizing, and here’s where we ended up next:
Shot #6
We also started playing with a bit of fill light from the camera’s perspective to brighten the front sides of each of the containers. The flower petals were starting to work, and the addition of the antique mirror (a requirement for the shot) were starting to work. They’re rough, but the direction is promising.
But before we accessorize much more, we need to deal with the difference in sizes between the various containers. The milky white cream was demanding too much attention, and our attempts to hide the tin behind it wasn’t working. We needed to change our perspective, so we came up with this:
Shot #7
It’s getting there. Still not pleased with the size of the product in the centre, and we weren’t sure about the powder – it’s not clear what it is. Without the container, it could be anything. More tweaking:
Shot #8
We removed the powder, tipped the milky cream on its side, and changed the focal point, moving it forward to the small products on the left. Unfortunately, even with those two changes, the cream still demanded too much attention – it was as big on its side as sitting up-right. Solution – move the product to the edge of the shot, like this:
Shot #9
Ah, that’s it! Some tweaking, accessorizing, and we’ll have this shot complete. We added another metal element in the background, and decided to bring back the flowers and work on placement. Sometimes the first placement works, sometimes it doesn’t – we just had to try and see what worked. We ended up with something like this:
Shot #10
We were getting really close. A few more tweaks, placement of the flowers, and ultimately nailed the shot. Took about 2 1/2 hours, but worth it – would you agree?
Final Shot
Client was pleased, and we breathed a sigh of relief that we were ultimately able to make the very different products work well together. It’s fun to scroll back and see all the steps and the progressions made to come up with the final shot. There was no post-processing – what was shot in-camera was what we delivered to the client. Typical for our natural light setups.
Hope you enjoyed it! Till next post.
Aug 19
Wow, where has the month of August gone? Been shooting pretty constantly all month, and realized it’s been a while since my last blog entry.
On Monday of this week, I was shooting still life for Bay – she owns a company called Honey Pie Hives & Herbals out of Prince Edward County. Our day called for 6 shots – 2 more than typical, so we really had to motor through the shots.
Ruth Gangbar worked as the stylist on the shoot, with Laura Branson once again providing props, but wasn’t present for the actual shoot. I am so lucky to work with incredibly talented people.
Here’s a behind-the-scenes shot showing Ruth styling the honey for one of the shots – taken with my handy iPhone.
Behind-the-scenes on a still life shoot
As you can see, I was using all natural light for the shot – my preference. My strobes are great, and I really like using them, but prefer to use natural light when doing shoots like this. I was bouncing a hair of light back into the front of the shot (you can see my Hassey camera right beside Ruth’s face). I used a HUGE white sheet supported by two AutoPoles for the fill. Too close makes it too bright, and it starts to look artificial.
I was once again using the HTS on the camera – it’s a tilt-shift lens that lets me better control perspective on the set – you can see the camera looks pretty high relative to the honey, but I had a fairly aggressive down-shift on the lens, with a bit of tilt to control the depth of field. Lovin’ my new HTS – it’s an incredible tool, and the integration with Phocus (that’s the Hasselblad software that runs my camera) does an amazing job correcting the image (removing vignetting – edge of the lens starts to darken when you shift and tilt a lens).
The grip in the shot is holding the honey stir stick in just the right spot – they tend to rise up to the surface if not held in place. And hand-holding won’t work – exposures for this type of natural light shots are typically up around 3 seconds. So nothing can move.
We worked on the composition for about an hour and a half, and ended up with this shot.
Honey
Little details like the honey dripping and pooling makes the shot.
Till next post…
Jul 24
There is so much going on in the world of organic foods, and I recently had the opportunity to work with a client shooting a variety of their vegetables. It was a great opportunity to test Hasselblad’s HTS 1.5, which arrived a few days before the shoot. What a great tool for food photographers – provides just enough shift and tilt capability while delivering amazing Hasselblad quality images! Oh, and the client loved the shots too.
Organic mushrooms
Jun 26
t'zan harmony exploding
We had a bit of creative fun shooting the the harmony bottle.
t'zan harmony on ice
Shooting on ice is always challenging – three shots, composited. One lighting the ice, one lighting the product, and one lighting both, then compositing all three to create the final version. Of course, the ice is always melting, so the set is constantly changing.
Jun 20
We have started working on integrating CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) into our work, giving us the flexibility to do things that aren’t otherwise possible in-camera or using standard post compositing and retouching work.
By creating three dimensional models of products, we’re able to replicate in-camera setups, and thus photo-realistic renderings.
For this project, we wanted to see how well a CGI rendering of a bottle would stand up next to two bottles from the same product family shot in-camera. It’s the ultimate test. If the rendered version looks as good and real as the other two bottles, then it’s been a success.
The three bottles were shot on silver, white plexi behind the set providing back-lighting, and one strip box to the left of the products, per the diagram. We’ve provided images showing the three original bottles (real), and one showing two real bottles, and one CGI version.
Success?
Overhead view of setup
In camera bottles
One bottle CGI
Jan 17
For this product shot, I wanted to give the product a bit of an ethereal glow – both from under and around the edges of the product.
This shot required three separate shots for the final composite – the primary product shot with lighting from below and around the edges, a separate shot of the lid without the direct reflection, and a final shot without the product in place so we could paint the table around the product to better control the shape of the shadows.
The lighting setup was as follows – strip light on the plexi and a spot light bouncing off a mirror adjacent to the lens to create a strong center light on the product, giving it a nice specular and terrific round shape. We tried flatter light, which didn’t emphasize the product enough for the shot. A final light was added under the plexi to give the bottom of the product a nice specular ring around the base and illuminate into the product to brighten it up.
Her are two photos of the setup:
Neutrogena setup
Neutrogena setup
And the final shot after compositing:
Dec 20
In this shot, I wanted to combine the ring used in the pigment shot with a vortex of water spinning down through the ring. The first trick was to determine how to create the vortex.
We started by placing a large 4L beaker on a magnetic mixer, and played with different sized stir sticks to get the right effect with the vortex – we needed to use the larger sticks given the volume of water.
But the biggest problem was trying to light a circular beaker that is made of normal glass i.e., not sand-blasted glass like our custom tanks. On a whim, I thought we could try the magnetic mixer under the tank we used to create the splashing pearls, thinking it might be powerful enough to move that volume of water.
And it worked!
We were able to get the vortex dancing about in the tank, creating all kinds of shapes for us. So we started working on lighting, and came up with the following setup:
Vortex in tank
The magnetic mixer was placed under the tank in the middle, supporting the weight of the tank. We placed a silver card on the mixer so the top of the plate wouldn’t reflect up into the vortex formed above it.
To provide the background, we aimed a broncolor pulso-spot 4 at a scrim with some tough-spun attached to it hanging just behind the back of the tank. The pulso-spot 4 created a round light on the scrim, which was diffused even more by the tough-spun, resulting in a nice soft round light with gentle fall-off, without eminating light into the tank itself.
We took a number of shots of the vortex while it formed in the tank until we had a number of great shots to use in the final composite. The tank was then removed, and the ring was shot in the existing lighting setup to use in the final composite. Using the ring shot from the pigment setup would not have worked – a different focal length lens was used in this setup (120mm) and slightly different lighting setup. The differences would have been enough to make the ring look as though it didn’t belong.
Here’s the final shot after compositing:
Ring vortex
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