and I’ve got less than ten minutes

to convince you

how good our Pro training stuff really is.

So, what I’m going to do is

show you through a

professional-level product shoot here.

And, show you all step-by-step, all completely free.

Just to give you an insight onto

our knowledge and what we can do for you.

So, let’s take a look at the set-up.

And we’ll break it down, show you the lighting,

show you how we make a shot like this work.

And, hopefully you’ll be able to take away something

from this that will give you

a better insight to this type of photography

which is often considered quite difficult.

Because liquids, bottles, glass product photography

can be quite a difficult shooting scenario.

But I’m going to break it down into some simple

step-by-step sequences for you.

So, let’s take a look at the set.

I’ve got a sheet of black ‘Perspex’ as my base;

sometimes called acrylic, ‘Melamine’, different things.

This is a glossy black plastic, basically.

It’s commonly used in product photography,

a lot of jewelry photography, liquids, bottles.

Here, I’m using it because it gives a beautiful reflection

of the product.

It’s a very classy look, and classy feel to the product.

I’ve got one light here at the moment,

which is just putting a light onto the label of the bottle.

You can see the shadow from my fingers there

on the bottle.

We’ll come back to that in a little bit more detail shortly.

On the background here, if you come around this side,

I’ve got a light on my background,

which is creating a gentle glow.

It looks quite harsh at the moment

because the modeling light is on full power,

but this is creating a gentle glow

on the background just to give us a little bit of

light above our horizon

at the back edge of the picture, OK?

Now, my depth-of-field for this shot

is only going to run the depth of the whiskey bottle,

to make sure the bottle and the label are sharp.

I’m going to keep the glass out of focus.

Now, some other key things on the back here

are some reflector cut-out panels.

If you have a look at these things,

you can see that I’ve got some

bits of card—gold foil card—that I’m using,

carefully positioned, behind the liquids

to bounce the light from my main light sources on this side

through the liquids

to give them a lovely, rich glow,

to bring the product to life.

Let’s go back around the other side

to look at the main lighting.

So, if we look on this side,

you’ll see I’ve got two soft boxes.

I’ve got two, thin, strip-light-type soft boxes.

One of them you can see here at the front

is a little bit further away from my trace,

and the other one is a little bit closer.

Now, the tracing paper

is used to diffuse my soft boxes even further,

because I don’t want to get

a really harsh strip-light on the bottle.

I want a lovely, graduated soft light,

and the reason I’ve got two of these lights

is so that I can get one light as an edge light down the bottle,

and one as a general light on the bottle.

So, what we’re going to do is

we’re going to film through another camera

to allow you to see what each light is doing on the bottle

so you can fully understand

the lighting set-up that we’ve got here.

We’re also going to film the result of what those reflectors do

that are behind the glass and the whiskey bottle,

so you can appreciate how important they are to the shot.

And we are going to get a really stunning image out of this,

and this set-up will show you how easy it is.

Now, you might be thinking, “Well, actually, I don’t have,

necessarily, this particular type of soft box.

I’m not using fancy studio lighting like this.”

Well, interestingly, these particular soft boxes by Broncolor,

these have a speed ring adapter,

so you can attach a strobe or normal flash gun

to this type of soft box to shine it through.

So, you could create most of this set-up

even with a pretty basic lighting.

Oh, there’s one other thing we need to look at.

Just come around this side.

You’ll see, as well as the two soft boxes here,

I’ve got this piece of black card.

And, if you have a look here,

this black card is shielding this soft box,

so that I’m not getting any light spill

from this soft box hitting my background.

Because, if I take this away,

you’ll see when we look through the other camera,

the light that would hit the background and spoil the shot.

So, let’s take a look at each of these lights and what each of them are doing.

OK, forgot to mention before about the ice in the glass:

fake ice

This is an acrylic ice cube.

These are readily available from most studio suppliers.

So, I’ve got a couple of those fake ice cubes.

Obvious reason: doesn’t melt,

won’t cause us any problems, stays where we need it to stay.

So, let’s start looking at what’s happening on this bottle.

What I want to do is break it all down,

and then put it all back,

so you can see exactly what’s going on.

So, Fabian is going to take these lights out,

so what I’d like you to do, Fabian, is

take the two soft boxes out completely.

You can leave them switched on,

because we just need a bit of light

so we can see what we’re doing.

Just take them out.

OK, so we’re left now with a piece of trace,

and you can see a light on the bottle.

Now, that light on the bottle is

from this light that I spoke about earlier.

This is just a little projection light

that allows you to pinpoint a specific area or a light.

Now, this is a projection light with a lens in it,

which allows me to focus the light,

or de-focus it, so I’ve softened it slightly.

And, it’s got what’s called “gobos,” which are little adjusters,

which allow me to

reduce the size or the box of the light

to a specific size that I choose.

Now, you could use a snoot,

you could use something a little bit more simpler,

a little bit more cost-efficient,

but this is particularly useful for product photography work,

for highlighting little details and labels.

You’ll also notice now

that the illumination through the liquid has completely disappeared,

because Fabian has taken away our main lighting,

which was hitting the reflectors behind the liquids

and bouncing through them.

So, now that main lighting is gone,

we’ve lost that effect.

Now, we’ve got the tracing paper

attached to a big c-stand with a big rod going over the top

for that roll to hang from.

We’re gonna take that out, as well, to start with,

but at the moment we’ve got this attached,

which is just a shield to stop the lights hitting the back.

Just a piece of card, gonna take that out, as well.

We’ll put that back in in a minute.

So, what I want to demonstrate…

actually, we won’t take this out, we’ll just spin this,

just to make it a little bit easier.

So, I’m just going to spin that out of the way.

Is that getting clear past that light?

Because, what I want you to see

is how nasty the light would be

if we weren’t using the trace.

So, Fab, if I could get you to take that soft box,

and put it into,

yeah, around about here, just so you can see.

Now, look at the lighting on that label,

or on the bottle.

Sorry, just my filter gels had fallen off from the back here.

If you look at the lighting on the bottle now,

you’ll see we’ve got this harsh, horrible block of light.

And, this is a common mistake made

when people try to illuminate glassware or bottles,

is using this very defined, rectangular light

that doesn’t gradate away,

and that’s the reason for the tracing paper,

is to create a gradation of light.

So, we definitely don’t want that.

That demonstrates that we need the tracing paper

to give the effect that I wan to achieve on this bottle.

So, let’s take that light out, Fab.

Now, we’ll put the tracing paper back in.

So, it’s just a roll of tracing paper that we’ve doubled up.

Just going to spin that back into position.

And, if we look at the bottle,

as Fabian now introduces the backlight into position,

watch what happens to the bottle.

Stop there, Fab.

So, you’ve got a lovely soft light already starting to create there,

but this light is to create an edge light on the bottle,

so that we just get a nice light down one edge of the bottle,

to separate it from the background.

So, if you push it into position now, please, Fabian,

you’ll see that light become a little bit stronger,

and create a lovely line down the edge of our bottle.

And, what I want you to do now, Fabian,

to just flick that light on and off for a second,

so they can see the effect of it.

That’s it, back on again.

And now, just pull it out further away,

so they can see the shape of the light

change based on the distance.

There you go, so you can see that light enlarging.

And, then, slide the light over towards this direction,

so you can see how it will wrap around the bottle

and light the bottle differently on each time.

So, we’re gonna put that light back into its correct position,

and that will give us the edge light.

Now, the problem that we’ve got from that light, at the moment,

is that we will get some of that light

spilling onto our background,

because that light, and I can see that light here,

and a lot of that light is going to come

and hit my dark gray background,

which is going to ruin the shot,

because I want to just control the light on the background

with this background light here.

So, that’s why we bring in the card.

So, this black card is going to attach to our c-stand

to create what we call a “flag,”

to stop any light from getting through onto our background,

which we certainly don’t want.

And, that, basically, is it

just attaching a piece of card to act as a shield

to stop the light coming through onto the background.

Then, moving on from that,

we’re going to bring the main light in now.

So, this is the main fill light on the bottle.

You can see that lovely extra light that’s just come in on the bottle there, now.

And, if you push that light in really close, Fabian

you can watch it change quite dramatically

the harshness of the light as it comes through the trace.

You can still see it’s got that lovely, soft diffusion from the trace,

but it has become harsher as it’s got closer to the trace.

This time, take it right back, please, Fabian.