Tag Team Photography

My sister-in-law is bubbling over with ideas for photographs. On in particular has been trapped in her mind for years. She said she has always wanted a picture of a liquor bottle for her brother. But, despite having a clear vision in her head of what she wanted, she's been unable to recreate that vision in a photograph. A large part of that frustration I figure is her equipment. She has a digital point and shoot that doesn't provide a lot of flexibility. However, when she heard I was diving into photography, she asked me to help her out. With her composition suggestion and what I have learned about the camera settings, we were able to capture the look she was going for. It took some trial and error, but here's how it ended up. She has a glass top end table that we use. We put black fabric over the table top with a hole cut in it. I read about the lighting from below on a website. The bottle was placed over the hole and a lamp under the table to allow some light to come up through the hole and the bottle. The window shades were drawn to darken the room, but left enough ambient light to show the label. A secondary benefit of the light from below is that it emphasized the roundness of the stopper on top of the bottle much as side lighting emphasizes the roundness of a mug or cup. The camera was mounted on a tripod and the black fabric was held up as a background. Lastly, the white balance was intentionally set too warm to "yellow the label and glass", and the exposure slightly underexposed, according to the camera meter anyway. It turned out that slight movements of the lamp resulted in various effects such as the edge of the bottle disappearing into the background or the bubbles in the glass being more or less visible. I really enjoyed this and the next time you want to experiment with your camera on a rainy day, I suggest finding things around the house and constructing your own mini studio. Here is the result.