Beverage Photography
Liquid Splash – Dropping Ice Cubes in a glass of Whiskey
Rocks glass with whiskey on a white sheet of plexi – glass.
Photographing a watch with a black body, black straps, a black face, black numbers and finally very dark grey hands was an exercise in controlling highlights to show the shape and details of the watch while keeping it black. This image is made up of three exposures that where brought together in Photoshop so that I could light individual elements and control them in Photoshop of the watch.
When you are photographing something as small as a watch you start to see all the imperfections that need to be corrected when you do your post processing. Retouching on this watch took up sometime. Everything that’s wrong jumps out at you when you’re working close up on a smaller item. All the imperfections in the product show up and need to be fixed as well as and handling marks, finger prints, scratches etc. Highlights need to be smoothed out, reduced, or enlarged to make everything look perfect. Perfection is always the goal when we are trying to show the product at it’s best.
A classic Massey Ferguson tractor in a field, I used a lightpainting technique to give the tractor a unique painterly look that you can’t achieve any other way. Lightpainting like this is done with a small Olight M10 Maverick LED flashlight and combining multiple images in Photoshop to build up the final image. In this case I used 31 separate images out of 81 total exposures. The tractor was brushed in light in small areas to light each part of the image slightly different but will still blend well with the other 30 images. In Photoshop the images are stacked and blending modes changed and then layer masks where used to help blend all the images together to come up with the final image.
This is a Studio Product shot of a bottle of Wild Turkey American Honey Bourbon Liqueur on a barrel. The background is of a fall color leaf scene that was blurred to make it look like a shallow depth of field was used.
Building the product image of Dripping Lipstick involved producing multiple images in the studio. One of the upside down lipstick, one of the standing lipstick case, another of a drip of nail polish, and then the one of the nail polish dripping down the lipstick case and puddling on the table. There was also a large amount of Photoshop done to clean up the elements and change the colors of all the elements to match.
A composite put together in Photoshop of spring water pouring into a glass on white. High speed flash used to stop the motion of the water and capture it as a split second rather than a soft flowing bit of water. Area left in the scene to drop marketing type.
A studio image of a small decorated perfume bottle done as a single exposure and then a seprate exposures of the smoke where taken and added to the perfume bottle. The humming bird was created in Photoshop by taking images of smoke and shaping them into the humming bird shape. Photoshop was also used to retouch the bottle to get rid of imperfections and dust and to create the reflection.
A single exposure using action stopping short flash duration to freeze the motion of the make up powder exploding off the lower brush. With the black background you can easily extend it to make room for marketing text and contact information.
Kurt A. Moore
Product Photographer
A composite of 6 images make up the image posted below. I shot each element separate so that I could control every element during the photographic process as well as the Post Processing in Photoshop. Product (studio) photography is all about control and being able to produce the images that the clients bring into the studio. There was also a element of motion stopping using high speed flash.
A photograph of asphalt with cracks in it that I have placed glowing orange glows and flames coming out of the cracks for this BBQ sauce that is made by Burning Asphalt Sauces out of Forestville, N.Y.
Product photograph of a perfume bottle
In the studio I place this small perfume bottle on a post to allow me to light it from all directions. 3 lights with strip or soft boxes and some reflectors where used to light the bottle. Then a bit of retouching was done in photoshop to clean up the image and finish it off.
Yellow dress purse or clutch light painted on black slate. The process used to record this image was to use a small LED flashlight with a PVC light modifier to brush light across the texture of the purse in multiple exposures. The seprate images (a total of 5) where combined in Photoshop using layer masking to bring all the images together, The final work was done in Lightroom 5.
This is two images combined in photoshop. One of the glass with a reflector behind it and then the 2nd one of the background (bottles, Xmas lights and light on the wood)
A glass of whiskey with ice on white plexiglass with a white background. A little retouching was done in photoshop. The lighting for the images was accomplished with 4 camera mounted flash units. Two units on each side of the subject pointed at a white background.
Camera and settings for this product photograph was a:
Canon 5D markIII set at f16 and a flash synch of 1/200 shutter speed
Canon 180mm macro lens
4 lumopro 120 flash units
Paul C. Buffs cyber synch flash triggers
Roll of white background paper for the background
Sheet of white plexiglass as a table top