Some of the shots we did for the LCBO late last year are currently running in stores throughout Ontario. It was a ski cabin inspired shoot, pairing selected VQA wines with delicious soups. Just in time to curl up in front of the fire to watch the Olympics.
My assistant Breanne and I were experimenting with different setups for shooting wine bottles on a set earlier this week. We wanted to get great looking shots without having to do a lot of compositing and retouching work in Photoshop.
This is one of the shots from our work – we only needed two photos for this image. The main shot, plus a second shot to get the gold lettering on the caps to come to life. Only a few touch ups in post.
As with most of my work, I try to capture as much in-camera as possible, relying on post processing for minor tweaks and clean ups.
I seem to be on a real beer kick lately. My last post, which was a long time ago now (apologies), I showed my progress shooting a can of beer. I finally found some time to shoot a bottle.
Although similar to a can of beer, bottles have their own challenges – primarily, you can see the liquid in the bottle, and it needs to look great!
So, a few days of work, numerous different approaches to see what I thought would work best, and this is what I came up with.
The setup was surprisingly simple – one soft box as the primary light, and one light shone up through the bottom to kick the liquid and give it some nice pop. The biggest challenge with the bottom light is controlling the light, not letting it spill onto the back or front of the product, and having enough power to shine up into the liquid.
The rest is just careful placement of the soft-box relative to the bottle, rear reflection, and gobos to control the light. And of course, the sweat on the bottle to give you the impression it is cold and ready to drink.
If you have questions – don’t hesitate to ask. Hope you enjoyed this post!
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.
Hard to believe it’s been 6 weeks since my last promo already – did we actually have August, or did something happen to the month?
On the 3rd of September, my next promo will be going out via e-mail, followed by postcards in the mail (the snail-mail physical type).
If you’d like to get on my distribution list, please contact me. You won’t get bombarded with promos, and we definitely won’t sell or giveaway your info. Well, unless we think we can extort a lot of money from you by keeping your existence quiet! :)
We’re busy preparing the next three promos – and I think you’re going to love them! Some beautiful shots. Enjoy.
Promo - asparagus and beef
There is something about shooting bread that I find really appealing – the texture, the gorgeous colours, the randomness of its shape – just makes for a very interesting subject to shoot.
Today, I spent the day shooting breads. Simple propping, so the bread could do all the talking in the photos, and just added parchment paper with the odd knife and glass. Very graphic images resulted – here’s one from the shoot.
Baguette
The side lighting used in this shot helped to bring out the texture in the crust, and gave a nice shading to the right side of the baguette in the photo. The blue glass gave the shot closure. The glass is from Crate & Barrel, a new favorite spot for sourcing props.
We are continuing to enjoy our latest lens – well, more of a lens adapter than a true lens – the HTS 1.5 from Hasselblad. It provides all the shifting and tilting you could want in food photography. Allows the camera to stay above the subject, but lowered down so you can see more of the food while keeping a straight composition. Think of it this way – for the shot shown, if the camera is tilted, the blue glass in the background would be leaning out of the photograph. In this shot, we were able to keep the camera pretty level, but used the HTS to lower the lens so we’d see more of the bread as the focal point of the composition. Glass stays straight, and with the tilting on the lens, we have even more control over the point of focus. It’s a fantastic tool.
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.
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
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