Tuesday morning I woke up and thought to myself, “I can do better.”
I had taken photos of a $3.99 crystal perfume bottle and the more I looked at it the more I thought the lighting was just not right. I had wanted a dark and moody night time feel for the product photograph but I thought the sides of the bottle were just too black. My plan was to finish it in photoshop that morning and start on something else, but it was nagging at me.
So I sipped my coffee and looked at it... I was out of packing tape which I needed and I needed to mow the grass too... and go!
I ran to Walgreens for the tape and the gas station.
The problem I had with the photo was the black areas on either side of the center. These areas are refracted through the crystal. They represent the area between light coming from the background and the lights coming from the sides meant to light the subject.
I started my reshoot by setting everything up as I had the day before. I had a light with a grid lighting a background I had made using glass vase marbles. I taped the marbles (this is were I used up all the packing tape) on black card stock as randomly as possible leaving a space at the bottom left for the bottle to be fit into. The light hitting the background reflects through the marbles and back to the camera creating a nice bokeh. And with my table top, black plexiglass, the bottle looks as though it floating in lights.
Next I set up the softboxes. The are modified into thin strips of light with card stock and then defused again through diffusion screens on either side.
The last thing was to fix those anoying black areas. To fix this I put white boards all the way from the background to the light boxes to reflect a little bit of light through that part of the bottle.
I wanted big bokeh, so I was shooting at a low aperture. So low that the whole bottle was not in focus. To fix this I focus stacked the image. I took five separate images focusing on different part of the bottle then combining the sharp areas in photoshop. Its hard to see the focus on such a small space so I marked my lens using masking tape. The best of both world, a sharp product and great bokeh!
I'm really happy with the final image. I hope you enjoy it too.
Fielder
Yes, I got the yard mowed... at a sprint!
