Wine bottle, wine glass and mountains - Opinions please

[Laramie]

Took this at the winery I work for. This is the first shot of this type I've ever tried. I'm sure it could have been staged much better. This was no flash as I don't have a decent one yet.

Rebel XTi. 50mm 1.8 at 1/100 and f22.

Any and all suggestions on how to make this a better picture would be appreciated!

[StealthLude]

its good, you might want to check out using a polarizer. It will help a lot with contrast and color. I dont think you need a flash, you have plenty of light. Might want to try taking some white construction paper and making your own reflector.

Good job tho.

any reason you are shooting at f/22?

[Laramie]

Originally Posted by StealthLude

its good, you might want to check out using a polarizer. It will help a lot with contrast and color. I dont think you need a flash, you have plenty of light. Might want to try taking some white construction paper and making your own reflector.

Good job tho.

any reason you are shooting at f/22?

I guess f22 just because I was using the nifty fifty and wanted to get more of the background in focus to make the shot have more overall feeling and not just focus on the wine.

Here's same picture at f4 1/3200.


Edited to add: This second pic is w/out any post processing.

[StealthLude]

ya you are right, I like it better at f/22 with the background. It looks very "wine country"

Since you are working against the sun, you are getting a lot of flair, and shot does not look that sharp, and you really need a hood and some kinda lighting or reflector.

A polarizer would help so much on this type of shot. You concept is good, but the shot needs a little more to just make it "print worthy"

You are on the right track, and your work looks promicing.

I dont know if its me but the table just looks a little tilted. I don know if its the table or just the crop, but I would bust out the grid in photoshop and level the bottel /glass.

[Laramie]

Originally Posted by StealthLude

ya you are right, I like it better at f/22 with the background. It looks very "wine country"

Since you are working against the sun, you are getting a lot of flair, and shot does not look that sharp, and you really need a hood and some kinda lighting or reflector.

A polarizer would help so much on this type of shot. You concept is good, but the shot needs a little more to just make it "print worthy"

You are on the right track, and your work looks promicing.

I dont know if its me but the table just looks a little tilted. I don know if its the table or just the crop, but I would bust out the grid in photoshop and level the bottel /glass.

Thanks for the comments, helps to give me a direction. Yes I was only shooting with a UV filter so polorizer and lens hoods are next on my list.

The table is very old and warped so it is off. I haven't used the grid in photoshop. Where is it in my menu's or whatever? Thanks for the comments. Took these around 1030 so I was fightin the sun but I really wanted those mountains as my background.

[enigma]

My 2c:

I disagree about the polarizer. At the angle you are working with, a polarizer will have almost no effect. They are most effective at a 90 degree angle with the sun.

I am thinking this: Could you perhaps shot the same pic later in the day, or earlier, to get the sun little lower, and more at a 90 degree angle? Or will this ruin your original idea about the sun is supposed to hit the glass?

I agree regarding the reflectors, they will help a lot.

Another thought is to back up a few steps and use a longer focal length, like perhaps 100mm. This will alter the perspective, so maybe the mountains will get too big? My thought was to get away from the f/22 and perhaps down to f/16, which will help overall sharpness.

Anyway, you have a good idea here! I agree it looks very wine country. I should know. After all, I live in one

Good luck,

[Laramie]

enigma:

I could have taken at anytime and I'll play around with different times to see how lighting goes. I was hoping to get more of a transparency through the wine but the Syrah is fairly dark. Next time I'll use our Cabernet or maybe a Rose and see how that color works.

I originally tried it at a rough 90 degrees but I think I was getting only mountain and no sky. I wanted to get the whole thing in there just for composition.

Can't go farther on focal length. I currently only have the kit lens and 50mm 1.8.

Thanks for the tips. I can try different sized bottles, maybe a glass on each side and bottle in middle.

[StewartR]

I'm not sure I've got anything startlingly original to add, but here goes anway:

I think this is a very good concept and the composition is great. By all means try variations, but I think you'll struggle very much to improve on this. I reckon a glass on each side of the bottle will look (a) redundant and (b) too symmetrical.

The bottle and glass are definitely tilted and need to be rotated slightly anti-clockwise.

I think a lighter-coloured wine could improve the shot, but a rosé might be a bit garish. If your winery produces any whites then it might be worth giving one of them a try.

Finally, lighting is of course the key - the angle of the sun on the mountains could be just as important as the lighting of the bottle and glass. If I were you I think I'd set up the scene with the camera on a tripod, then come back to it and take a few shots (with and without polarizer, with and without reflector, etc.) every hour or so throughout the day as the angle and colour of the light vary. You'd get a lot of variations that way and I think it would be easy to home in on the best ones.

[col4bin]

I like the composition but I would edit out the reflection in the wine bottle and maybe space the glass apart from the bottle so they don't look like they are touching.

[Jon, The Elder]

StewartR's answer is they way I would approach it also.

Definately NOT 2 glasses as mentioned earlier.

Nice beginning keep at it.

[gkuenning]

I don't have firm suggestions, but I can think of lots of experiments.

I like the level of wine in the glass; it's just right. If you can get more light through the glass, that'd be good. I notice you're in SoCal; if you can get some of the snowy mountains into the background while the air is still clear these next few days, that might be very striking (especially if you can pose a model in skimpy clothing!).

I'd play around with the relative level of the mountains compared to the glass. Right now, the ridge seems to be around the middle of the picture. I wonder what it would look like with the ridge higher or lower.

The shallow-DOF shot is definitely awful. That makes me think it might be good to use a longer lens and back off a bit, so you can get the mountains to be crisp while keeping the glass in focus.

None of these are clearcut, at least at my level of imagination. But hey, experimentation is cheap, right?

[D. Craig Flory]

I took a different approach and made it spot color.

[thrumyeye]

Oh - uh-huh. Not the spot-color. Took away way too much from a great photo. The glass looks as though it's floating also. It lost too much "wine-country charm" and the glass appears too blue against the black and white.

[D. Craig Flory]

Originally Posted by thrumyeye

Oh - uh-huh. Not the spot-color. Took away way too much from a great photo. The glass looks as though it's floating also. It lost too much "wine-country charm" and the glass appears too blue against the black and white.

In retrospect, I probably should have had the glass black & white also. Spot color draws attention away from the mountains ... and to the product. I do agree that the blue of the glass was too much. Thanks for pointing out that the glass should not have been in color.

[Meaty0]

Originally Posted by enigma

My 2c:

Another thought is to back up a few steps and use a longer focal length, like perhaps 100mm. This will alter the perspective, so maybe the mountains will get too big? My thought was to get away from the f/22 and perhaps down to f/16, which will help overall sharpness.

I agree. I try to avoid apertures smaller than f11-f16 as diffraction tends to soften the image. I'm not so sure about the longer focal length as this may put the background further out of focus.

I like the colors in the original and the concept. I wonder if including a person in the background might help?