Challenge: Absolut Advertisement II (Advanced Editing VII*)
Camera: Nikon D90
Lens: Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D
Location: Chateau Snaffles
Date: Jun 21, 2011
Aperture: f7.1
ISO: 200
Shutter: 15 seconds
Galleries: Studio, Food and Drink
Date Uploaded: Jun 21, 2011
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Whew! What a shoot...
Once I decided on the concept, all I had to do was get the right bottle (thanks to Cheryl, owner of The Brigadoon, the only fine restaurant around that uses Absolut) and stuff it full of these funky little Garden Stones from the dollar store. I had three bags of them, figured they would be enough...
Uhmm, nope. And as they had been a spring item and it's now summer, the store no longer carried them :-/ So I had to devise a shim in the back of the bottle, then stuff in the stones down the front to get the effect I wanted. Filling the bottle with water helped as water magnifies, and the curve of the bottle helped with that aspect too.
The shoot itself was easy enough. I shot in the Closet of Doom and on a black cloth-covered table. Camera on tripod with mirror lockup, charged up the rocks with a floodlight, then just played with the exposure.
The fun part were the various shims I used. First time I used a clear plastic bag filled with water. Problem is, it was too easy for rocks to get behind it and go to waste. Then I emptied out the bottle, filled it about 1/3 full of ice chunks and water and left it on its back in the freezer. The ice shim worked great, but it's summertime and I was shooting upstairs. So sadly the ice didn't last that long, I didn't give it enough time to form more than just a thick crust as opposed to a solid block.
Ah well live and learn...next time...
pp: RAW-TIFF conversion, straighten, crop, brightness/contrast, vibrance, saturation, clone out some dark areas in bottle and escapee bits of rock, resize, sharpen, save for web. Eh wala. |
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