Hey Dummy! Clean the Glass.

This was my 365 shot for today.

I picked up this bottle of wine tonight on the way home from work. I loved the label. Sadly, nine times out of ten, I pick my wine by the quality of or my attraction to the label. As long as I don't hang out in sketchy liquor stores it usually works out. Anyhow, this wine was actually recommended by the fellow at The Ferocious Grape. It just so happened that I was attracted to the label too.

I digress...

I was tired at the end of the work week so I was not too motivated to create a complicated picture tonight for my 365 shot. However, I did know that I wanted a glass of wine. The rest just happened.

The shot was pretty straight forward. Pop the cork, fill the glass and make sure the cork finds a place in the picture. I put one bare flash, gelled with a full cut of CTO at camera right, positioned a couple of feet behind the subject and pointing forward towards the camera at an angle. It warms the cutting board, adds some interesting shadows and puts some fabulous specular highlights on the wine bottle and especially the wine glass.

The main light, set at f/4.0, is shooting through a Lastolite Ezybox (Have I mentioned how much I love my Ezybox? I'm sure I have. Well, I do love it! It's incredible). I set up f/4 because I really wanted to emphasize the beautiful label of the wine bottle and have everything else begin to soften as the eye moves toward the background.

I set the lights. Tried a few test shots and loved what I saw so I kept on shooting.

Thirty or so shots later I was sure I had my shot so I disassembled the lighting set up and went to my computer for post-processing. So what was the first thing I noticed? Ummmmm, those nasty water marks and smudges on the glass? ARRRRRRGH! It was too late to re-shoot as we were heading out to dinner in 20 minutes so I just went with it. I am pretty darn sure I read way back when in a Scott Kelby book that if you are going to shoot a wine glass take the time to give it a good polish first. Ooops I completely forgot about that! And you and I both know those tiny, low-res LCDs on the back of the camera make EVERYTHING look good. It's only after you get the image back to your computer when the "yikes" moment strikes.

Darn it!

Well, next time I'll remember that for sure... I hope.

Keep shooting

PS Oh, and, picture first, wine second. :-)