Photo Of The Day – Fire Card And Some Wine

Peter-West-Carey-Firecard2016-0722-3584

Title: Fire Card And Some Wine

Location: Los Angeles, California, USA, North America

Description: This product shot has a lot going on to make it work.

First is was a battle of timing to make sure the light of the fire was not too different than the distance sky lest one be blown out. Then I had to hope there wasn’t much wind.

I wanted the wine in the shot to bring in the urban casualness of it but didn’t want to open my only bottle of white wine. So I cleaned a glass, filled it with water and then some green food coloring. I knew I could adjust just the green in the computer later since there was not a lot of green in the scene in general. This would be faster than masking in PS, etc… In the end I gave it a more yellowed white wine look.

I used a number of gradients in the image to lighten the wine and bottle and then darken the sky and punch up the contrast and saturation. That’s one thing I enjoy about product photos like this; shaping reality to fit fantasy. It was a nice sunset and post sunset, but I wanted more color. Thankfully the clouds help the shot and were just right while still getting in the palm trees to the side.

I had a fair amount of noise in the black areas and scatter from the flames but those were easy to tramp down with the Adjustment Brush and some exposure adjustment.

I left negative space in the left side for text, otherwise I would have moved the fire to better balance the shot.

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Camera Canon 7D Mark II
Lens Canon 28-300mm L
ISO 200
Focal Length 28mm
Aperture f/6.3
Shutter Speed .5 seconds
Altitude 1160′

Photograph Copyright 2016 Peter West Carey. Image Available For Commercial Licensing (email).

Prints of this image are available here if you want professional quality shipped to your home.

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