A long night - Comments please

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Permalink Reply by nathan mccreery on February 8, 2010 at 12:35pm

Richard,

Glass is one of the most difficult things to photograph, and make look good. In order for you to make this work you'll need to find a way to get the glass to separate from the background, which this doesn't. There are two ways to do this, only one works with a dark background. Place a very large reflector on either side of the glass and then manipulate them so that a reflection of it runs the complete length of the bottle and glasses. Extraneous reflections should be eliminated. This can be a very difficult and frustrating exercise. Next, place a small reflector behind the liquid in the glass to reflect light through the liquid to the camera. It's difficult to make these work but it is possible. I've worked with hundreds of glassware photographs over my career and there are basically two lighting schemes used with glass; white line and black line. I've just described white line. Just remember, anytime you photograph a very shiny object, like glass, you are photographing the reflections of the light source, not necessarily the object.

You'll need one light only for the reflectors and one light to reflect light through the liquid.