Whiskey in the jar

November 13th, 2007 by MjP

Ingredients:

  • Single malt whiskey
  • Heavy duty glass (bought cheap one)
  • Clear ice cubes
  • Camera and lightning props

Expected results:

A drunken photographer? Maybe, lets see what happens…

Setup:

Making the clear ice cube: If you want clear ice-cubes you need use distilled water and boil it twice (boil the water, let it calm down and boil again) and freeze them slowly. I did not have the distilled water so I tried do with tap water.

You can also use use artificial ice-cubes manufactured by Trengove Studios or similar cubes from other companies like Condor Foto (ice melts really fast, it is easier to work with artificial ice).

The key light (60cm soft box) was located behind black paper (gobo) which had 25×15cm hole in it. The glass is put on the small black tube to make isolation on photoshop easier. The amount of the black on the edge of glass can be controlled by moving glass forward to key light direction.

The fill light was located right side of the camera (angle of 45 degrees) to get nice reflection to left side of glass and correct color to whiskey. To get correct color I used yellow filter about 20×30cm with 50x 50 cm “frost paper”.

Here is my lightning setup diagrams:

Top view:

Top view of whiskey glass studio setup

Front view (camera side):

Front view of whiskey glass studio setup

Results:

Results were not good as I wanted them to be. I made few mistakes during the shoot and preparation. The tap water I used for ice cubes did not make them clear enough even with boiling the water twice. The ice was clearer than usually, but not clear enough to get really nice looking ice. I will use artificial ice next time to get more professional looking image. Other problem was the frost occurred on the glass which did not look nice (it would look nice on the beer bottle but not in the whiskey glass). Other mistake was to use cheap whiskey glass. The low-quality glass have tiny scratches and defects all over so this means lot of photoshop work afterwards.

First image without ice cubes:

Studio photograph of glass of single malt whiskey

and the second one with the cubes:

Photograph of glass of single malt whiskey shoot in the studio.

Conclusions:

  • Home made ice cubes are not clear enough if made from tap water (not sure if clear enough even made from distilled water).
  • Use only high quality (crystal) glass to avoid excessive use Photoshop. Cheap glass has many defects and tiny scratches all over it. High quality crystal glass does not seem to have these problems.
  • Lightning filter (gel) needs to be used to get correct color on the whiskey.
  • Artificial ice cubes will be used next time (real ice melts too fast and changes liquid outlook and it makes unwanted frost on the glass)
  • Whiskey tasted good Laughing

Post tagged with:      

Posted in Food, Photography | | 1 Comments

del.icio.us Digg Google StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo!

Finally online

November 5th, 2007 by MjP

Open I just finished fixing the problems in database. Database problems were caused because I moved the system from development directory to domains root directory. Few url’s went wrong during the move and some plugins needed re-installation order to work. Now everything should be all right and the site is open. If you notice any other abnormalities please contact me.

update: IE 7 does not work correctly.. have to fix css…

Post tagged with:      

Posted in Site related | | 0 Comments

del.icio.us Digg Google StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo!