Hi,
Towards the end of last year I did some bottle shots for a national wine ad campaign. When I bought the local Time man of the year issue I was quite surprised to see the final print ad.(I didn't even recognize the photos at first!) This made me think of the way I photographed these wine bottles , and I thought I would share my experience. Let me state that I am also not a specialist still life photographer!
For the camera I used a 450d with a 100mm macro. I used the live view function to focus, frame and expose. It took about an hour (at a leisurely pace) to fine tune the lighting. I had already made some test shots beforehand and my highlights on the bottles had been okayed by the AD. I used a home made setup that cost in total about 70usd and a day to assemble. The white wine was photographed first and the label and cork separately. The AD then did some work on the highlights etc and assembled all the separate photos. together. When the client arrived she had it all ready for them. they were happy and I could then photograph the red wine. The lighting setup remained unchanged. We couldn't initially figure out why the colour two labels looked different until we realized that the label on the white wine was more yellow because of the light shining through the transparent white wine! We then used the same label for both the bottles, only changing the colour of the lettering. The whole process took about half a day and my only involvement was lighting the bottle, label and bottle top and then handing over the converted raw files. For the shadows the final shots were used and sorted in photoshop. The AD did the rest. Live view,no photoshop(from my side), no fancy equipment, no assistant, no flash and a home made lighting rig.
Regards, Ivan
