Fotodano. Look. See. Feel.: Shooting Glass

Which one of my friends said "Every Photograph is a lighting problem."?
True, true. Which is why giving myself glass lighting self assignments is always interesting.

Pop Photo recently did a 'how to' spread on cool high key set up. So, out came the lighting cookbook and away I went.

I had started working with two of the glasses on the right but, that got boring. So, I went to the fridge and got one of Matt's adult fermented beverages. Texture is great for the beer but my glass was getting lost.

A black card to camera right made everything pop just a little. Now I thought; lets get a frosty cold one in there to add some texture to the composition.

Reflections from my black card got way too soft on the bottle. I also started to see that separation and space between the glass and the bottle was not what I wanted.

And there it is. Two changes I would make: Use a spray bottle to create some condensation on the bottle without the overall frosting and I would bring my fill light a few more inches closer to my shooting axis to get rid of the shadow at the lower left of the bottle.

Here's the set up:

AB800 with 42" octabox as main/backlight, black card to camera right and a generic speedlight just off axis pointing down to act as front fill light for the labels etc.

All in all, I happy with it. Then came the comedy.

Don't spontaneously open the beer and think you'll just pour some into the glass and shoot. You're liable to bump the table, knock over the black card, spill the beer and generally cock it up. And, that's exactly what happened.