Vodka Series

Is been some time I didn't touch my blog, busy for a Convocation Photoshoot, my current job and of course my long wait Mini Studio! RAWR!!! Now I'm back with my mini studio!!

Although it is not fully equip yet, but is good enough to start some small product shooting. Slowly I'll add in more things in future. Here is a photo of all the things that I used to make my own lamp. Yeap, that it is! A light bulb with a aluminium

In this post, I will show you my shots for a bottle of Vodka. Basically this is my setup as shown below. Object in the middle, and two lights at the side. As you can see, the light is diffused with the cotton made oil filter. I kinda like this diffuser, it perform his job by diffusing light, it can hold high temperature and of course it is cheap, $1.50 for a pack, it comes with two pieces in it.

Here, you can see the white backdrop. It is actually a wooden stick on two "stand" that is normally used to hang clothes. Instead of hanging cloths on the stick, I clipped my mahjong paper on it. I used 3 pieces to make sure it looks solid enough. Else you will be able to see through it when the lights are on.

I have my camera mounted on a tripod and a 50mm f1.8 on it. I shoot at ISO 100, Aperture at f11 and shutter speed around 1/30. To make sure the lights does not affect the shoot, I took a pre-shot without any lighting except the natural lights. If the picture is absolutely black in colour, I assume it as the natural light does not affect my photo. Regarding to the white balance, it is pre-adjust before the shoot, with the lights on.

In between the shooting progress, I used two different colour of card board, which is black and white as reflector. Black reflector for white background and white reflector for black background. Here are the results.

For this photo, the black background is not dark enough, that is why it turns a bit brownish. In the future, I will need a 100% black backdrop and a 100% dark room to make a black background shoot.

White background and white object, give a very clean and simple feeling. I feel that it has a classier look than other colour combination. There is a mistake I did in this photo, too dark on the bottle cap and the old man logo. And the reflection is not that nice. I need a better reflective card in the future. The wordings, I just copy from the web. Woops....

Adjust to a much cooler temperature white balance gives a very icy feeling. I spray some water on it. So it looks icy cold. As it just came out from the fridge.

Placing the object in the center of the frame, create a stronger impact towards the object. It leads the viewer's sight directly to the object then only to the text around it. Meanwhile, there are actually two exposures in this shot. One is the bottle, and the other one is the bottle cap. Then I merge them in post processing.

Thinking out of the box, I copy five bottles of Vodka into one single frame instead of only one bottle of Vodka. Then I fill in different colour for each of them. This give you a total different feelings than the previous photos. I feel a bit old school in this photo. You can go to my flickr for a larger view.

I hope you guys like these photos. If you have any suggestion or comments, feel free to post it here. C & C are all welcome. Your feedback is most welcome.

Cheers,
Lu Ting Jieh