Week number four of my year long project was a busy one. On top of my regular work week I was also working on website catalog images for a local company called Southern Polished. They are a shoe repair company that also hand crafts sandals and flip flops. I knew I would be short of time so I wanted to make this weeks project fairly simple, but it evolved into a heavily composited splash photograph.
I started out with the idea of photographing a simple Jack Daniel's whiskey photograph using some fake ice cubes I had gotten. One light was behind a diffusion panel with a board in the center. This created a very sharp rim light on the sides of the glass. Light two was used to light the red textured background paper. The final light was a gridded snoot light directly above the glass.
The set up was straight forward and I was able to get an image I liked within a few minutes. I spent a little time moving things around to see if I could improve on the picture. Then as a fluke I decided to take the ice cubes out and drop one into the glass. I immediately liked the splash and switched all my lights to the “action” mode so the I could stop the droplets in mid air.
I love the final image, but there were two thing I could improve upon next time. My exposure was within tolerable limits but it was too low. Not something I'm proud to admit but it happened. Also, I should have done a ruff composite before I stopped shooting. I shot lots of images to give myself options but I only had a general idea of what the final image would look like. A ruff composite would have helped solidified what direction I wanted the splashes to go and made the final image even better.