Product photography can be a challenging task, producing the right look for each item and getting the lighting to make that product stand out on a flat one dimensional print can be daunting....... But it is also fun and a great way to teach yourself a great deal about lighting which you can use in many different setups. Read on to see how I produced this image using everyday items, basic flashes to produce that pro product look!
The Set Up
How simple is this setup! Ok heres the break down - sitting the bottles on top of a glass chopping board to give the reflection and underneath the glass I placed some bubble wrap to give a little texture, I then set up my background flash (youngnuo yn 560) and centered the light to give a nice circular gradiant on the roller blind I used as my backdrop.
Once I positioned it correctly I set up another two Youngnuo flashes
( you can find these upgraded models here http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Yongnuo-Speedlite-YN-560II-YN560II-560-Marked-II-slave-flash-unit-for-Camera-/271247028186?pt=UK_CamerasPhoto_CameraAccessories_CameraFlashUnits_JN&hash=item3f27952fda )
as my rim lights in my homemade light modifiers
( you can read all about how I made them here http://www.barrymountford.com/#!Fun-with-DIY-light-modifiers/c6mc/8E1C2008-4B83-4634-B90E-36C9CD365B9B).
I positioned my main light The lencarta Atom 360 (http://www.lencarta.com/studio-lighting-shopfront/atom-barebulb-portable-flash) on a boom with a grided octo to control the light keeping it focused on just the bottles.
I then wanted to get the rim lights looking even around the edges of all the bottles, this took a little adjusting of the rim lights to get it just right.
You can see by adding the rim lights gives a nice edge to the bottles, now with this setup I can move the front bottle closer to the camera or closer to the rear bottles to adjust the amount of rim light on that bottle.
The image above you can see by just positioning the bottle slightly closer to the rear bottles it allows less of the light from the rim lights to hit the back of the bottle and gives you control of the look you want to achieve.
I then wanted to add some punch to the beer in the bottles and also try to hide the rear flash showing, so I added some kitchen foil to the back of the bottles. This took a few shots to get the look right as you can see from above its not looking even just yet!
Once I positioned the foil to look even I then mixed up some water with pure glycerin and sprayed the bottles to give the effect that they are ice cold.
Now I have them looking ice cold with texture in the bottles I decided to increase the exposure on the bottles and add a blue gel to the background to create a more advertising look to the overall image. You can see that the front bottle is out of focus, this is because of the position of it. I could adjust the f stop to have all the bottles in focus but that would mean increasing the power of my flashes which were already at their limits with this set up, so i decided to leave it at F8 and take two shots one focusing on the front bottle and then one on the rear bottles and then combine them in post. The below image is the focus on the front bottle.
And thats it the final image was finished in Photoshop giving the image some extra sharpening and increased the vibrance to the beer and removed the reflection of the main light using the content aware patch tool.