Commercial Work - Photography Projects
Water and gel beads, black rocks, eight different and multi-functional liquids all spilled over glass. White reflector and alien bee usage. Shot in the scene of a standing shower.
Commercial lighting - a case study
Overview, Approach and Objective
For this project, I was learning how to photograph glass objects. Glass is a tricky subject to photograph because it's highly reflective and bright. Bright spots on glass tend to ruin the overall imagery. The trick with photographing glass is to have different reflectors that focus on different areas of the object. I wanted to also challenge myself by incorporating liquid, since liquid is a distractive element that can be used to enhance the look of glass. I chose to work with an expensive liquor and iced tea. I approached this project by setting it up directly in my mother's bedroom. My objective with it was to learn how to photograph glass, but to also learn how to light products for commercial lighting photography and advertising.
Inspiration
I was particularly inspired by this photograph of the light liquor inside of the bottle as well as inside of a cup. I knew that I wanted my setup to be similar with a white background and I wanted to have the shadows be reflective, which would require a mirror. Instead of a cup, I planned on using a wine glass for my imagery.
Process - Set Up
My product required quite the lighting set up. I had to use different colors of posterboard, and I needed to use heavy weighted objects to keep the posterboard intact. I placed the liquor bottle and wine glass on top of the white posterboard because I knew that white paper is highly reflective, and I wanted reflections in my imagery. I placed the Alien Bee lighting kit directly behind the black posterboard to prevent shadows on the backdrop. I also poured iced tea into the wine glass instead of the liquor because the liquor is very expensive. The tea was the same color as the liquor in the bottle. The final imagery was created in Photoshop with slight modifications.
FINAL PRODUCT
SEE MORE PHOTOS
