Hi guys, I'm Karl Taylor... in this video you're
going to see me execute this shot here
which is a lovely bottle of red wine product shot.
red wine product shots i'm going to show
I'm gonna show you exactly how I do this
shot, step by step, all the components in the
lighting. Stick with me to the end of the video
and I'm going to give you a little bit more
information about that photograph. So what I've
done here for this wine shot
is just use the nice
piece of walnut wood surface,
a couple of old rustic ropes hanging in the background
a piece of leather hanging
in my background, another piece of rope from the
table just to set the scene... to give the right
tones and warmth and colours to the shot,
but you're right there are
a lot of lights in this picture.
If we start at the back, I'll talk you through
what we've got set-up.
I've got this P-70 reflector with a medium
honeycomb grid which is casting this glow of
light that you can see here just grazing up there
just to put a glow of light behind my bottle.
"Additionally with an orange filter?" Yeah just
got a little bit gel on it...
just a slight warm up gel.
a slight orange tint again just to create
that mood and atmosphere. You'll see l've got the same
on this one.
I've got a little Pico light with a
Fresnel adaptor on the front with the yellow
and that's just to add a little
light onto these ropes
adding a warm color. These ropes will be
very much out of focus because
I'm going for a very shallow
depth of field. F3.2
... and my 3rd background light, I've just got a
projection attachment adding a little bit more
light on the rope here.
This could have been a fresnel with another honeycomb but
I just happened to have one of those to hand so
I'm using those two Pico lights
and this P-70,
that's the background illumination.
If we move round to the main light which is this
big softbox. We've got the 120 X 80 softbox,
which is the main light on the bottle
and the main light on the label.
Then I've just put a little block of wood here,
just to reflect some of that light off
that white surface back
onto the shadow side of the label.
"It's that small that it only hits the label without
creating more highlights in the glass?"
Exactly, because if it was a big tall reflector,
I'd have another stripe
of light down the bottle.
So this just restricts it to the label area.
Then over the top,
another P-70 with a very tight
honeycomb grid and that's creating just a
little pool of light in this area so that gives a
nice vignette running
out here to keep that
nice vignette running out here to keep that
atmosphere to the shot. Then finally
over here I've got a Siros light,
that's the great thing with broncolor, it's all
compatible with each other so I can mix and match,
I've got Pico lights, Siros lights, Scoro lights, Uni lights...
doesn't really matter but you can see here I just
put a red gel
on this light - shining it through
some diffusion material and this
is just to add a little line of red light
down the side of the bottle because what I find with red wine is
I find with red wine is you never see
the red because it's really
black! So this just hints that red
into the bottle and into the glass and the glass
of wine as well. So I think what we'll
do is I'll start taking the picture from the back
first from the background and
then we'll build it up
one shot at a time... light by light.
So let's switch off everything...
except the P-70
that's grazing the background
and we take that first shot.
This should just be the background.
We can see there, nothing else visible only that
background glow.
So now I'll add on one of the Pico lights
which is the lights
that's illuminating the rope
from the right-hand side.
That's just little bit of catch light
on that rope.
Next is to add the Siros light in which gives the red glow
down the side of the bottle.
There we go that's a nice the red catch light
down the edge of the bottle.
We now put on the softbox...
OK - here's something I don't like with
bottle shots and a softbox.
They can work really nicely if you want a hard
edged line. You see this
very defined edge line here
from the big softbox but I prefer it if we can
soften that a little bit. So what I do is use I
piece of scrim, tracing paper.
I'll bring this in front to the softbox.
We'll need to turn the softbox light up
pull that back a little bit and we'll
We'll need to turn the softbox light up
a little bit and power to compensate for
the reduction in strength from this scrim.
Now with the diffusion material
We've got a lovely softening...
It just takes that hard off the softbox.
I wanted to create
this vignette of light effect here,
so I need to create a pool of light. What
I've done is just with the P-70,
with a very tight honeycomb grid is put that
above the bottle to add a pool of light.
We should finally finish
the picture off.
So just a subtle little extra detail on there.
Fllicking between the two
we see without and with
See how much atmosphere it
adds to the shot. It also adds a nice little catch
light to the top of the bottle.
Very happy with that as we
managed to put it all together
in a short space of time:-)
Thanks for watching!
Let's take a look at the photograph again... just
to reiterate a few points. You can see this
glow of red light that I've got shining down the
side of the bottle here... I used the red light
just to add the impression of red wine. Bottles
of red wine always come out
solid black and by
using the red light it just conveys that
message of red wine. If we also look you
can see some of the red light is glinting in the
glass and refracting through the glass
which I find is a nice touch.
One of the most important lights in this shot
is actually the light that's coming down from
above the bottle creating this glow
on the wooden table surface.
It's isolating
the bottle from the
background surface that it's sitting on.
It is also responsible casting those short
shadows because that light is coming from above
from slightly behind it's also the light this
catching the top of the bottle cap.
You can see the light down the side of the
bottle - the main key light from the big softbox.
You can see how the
edges of that light are
nicely feathered because I use the diffusion
roll material in front of that light source.
That's what's giving it that feathering
rather than hard stripe which is what
I prefer on my bottle shots.
Then you can
see the light on the background, the glow on the
background and the independent
lights with the colored gels on the
ropes and the small props and
it's just worth pointing out one more time
there isn't many props here we've got the
background material a couple of ropes and a
wooden surface but it's point adding those extra
little props and
thinking about your surface and
your materials that really enhances the mood of
the shot and sets the scene to help the
product shot work. I hope you enjoyed that
short tutorial, thanks very much... Karl Taylor