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.