Roughly 7yrs ago I took the photo below lighting it with a 45 watt fluorescent bulb (equivalent to a 225 watt incandescent bulb) and a clamp light.
Recently I decided to recreate this image equipped with a better understanding of lighting and a few tricks up my sleeve.
In the original image I used real ice and actual Appleton rum. In the reboot I used diluted “browning” (a liquid seasoning) and acrylic ice cubes. I also had a ‘stand-in’ – an old rum cream bottle and glass with fake ice. This gave me enough time to get the lighting right before I photographed the ‘hero’. (you can get an idea of the setup here – https://www.instagram.com/p/BSX5BCxDEVq)
After I was done I played around a bit and came up with these additional images, which I shot handheld.
This was a result of using a speedlight with a 10 degree grid hitting the background behind the bottle at 1/64th power and fill cards. I did a bit of editing to pull out some details in the shadows.
Straight out of the camera (S.O.O.C.). Yup! This images is S.O.O.C. I shot RAW + JPEG and this is the JPEG straight out of the camera. My objective for this image was to have a white background with limited shadows and a lit VX logo without having to do any post work, similar to this D&G Malta image. I drew a bit of inspiration from a Karl Taylor video I watched some time ago.
This personal assignment took a lot longer than I imagined but was well worth it. Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours to master your craft. Let’s get those hours in!
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