I haven't entered a studio shot for quite a while because they never turned out exactly how I wanted. I decided force myself to keep working on this one until I was happy with it. It still didn't come out exactly how I planned, but I'm very happy with the results anyway. Hopefully voters feel the same way.
Setup:
Background, base, and both sides are white foam board. (reflections suck with glassware!)
Background lit with a Vivitar 285 with a red gel on it. It was set to 1/16 power but was still too strong, so I added a one stop ND filter on it.
The background gradient was created with a 580 EXII (no gel) with a grid attached. Set to 1/128 power.
Umbrella was lit from above with an SB-26 set to 1/32 power.
Martini glass contained water with a drop of food coloring. I added the water with a funnel to make sure water drips didn't show up above the water line.
I took about 100 shots before I found the configuration I liked best.
Statistics
Place: 2 out of 63 Avg (all users): 6.9313 Avg (commenters): 8.3750 Avg (participants): 6.0833 Avg (non-participants): 7.2526 Views since voting: 2033 Views during voting: 252 Votes: 131 Comments: 20 Favorites: 1 (view)
Good work and congrats on the ribbon, I thought this might be KarenNfld's. Well done! Thanks too for the lighting setup details, I'm working on getting a similar setup together.
Very nice composition and colors. I like the swirlies going on in the glass. There's something else going on above the rim of the glass that doesn't look right to me - gray and smudgy looking but very faint. 8 from me. Voted earlier.
eta I forgot this was basic and you couldn't fix the background if you wanted to. Sorry.
The perfect umbrella for any weather
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