As part of my new year resolution, I plan on photographing something each week and post about it. I’m hoping this goal will motivate me to explore new photography subjects and techniques and grow as a photographer. So here we go!
Tonight I decided I wanted to come up with a magazine quality product shot of a bottle of one of our favorite liquors: Tequila. I don’t really drink hard liquor (anymore), so I tend to amass a sizable assortment of the stuff every time I throw a party. I have several bottles of Milagro in my stash and have always liked their design and presentation.
I shot with the Canon 5D Mark III and the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens. I cannot say enough about how versatile this lens is. For lighting I used two Canon 430EX speedlights in full manual mode. On one I had a Strobies softbox and the other a honeycomb and lavender blue gel. The bottle was placed on a piece of black plexiglass I had laying around my workshop. I posted a cell phone shot of my setup. It was a good and fun exercise to shoot a product shot using the bare essentials and with no editing. The JPEG compression does not reproduce the subtle colors well. Without further ado, here’s what I came up with.
PhotoSnob 