Hey Hive!
One of the most fun product photography categories for me is bottle photography. Bottle photography is one of the more challenging styles of photography when it comes down to product photography. The reflection of light is a lot of fun to play with. When I was invited to talk about my photography journey for a club of entrepreneurs, they gifted me a bottle of Glen Moray. An awesome gift that I didn't expect to receive in the first place.
As a "small" freelancer it can be quite difficult to get the attention of big brands known worldwide. As a starter, this was way beyond my reach. But, I wanted to try and test out bottle photography. This is where I discovered how much I enjoyed doing high-end product photography.
High-end product photography? There is a difference?
Yes, there certainly is. I could've easily set up my studio, taken the photograph of the bottle on a white background, cut it out, and voila. This is what the "cheaper" versions of product photography you 80% of the time see in webshops. If you look at more expensive products, you'll notice that the photography of that product also looks a bit more "professional". The only difference between these two types of photographs is the time and care that's being put into the product. But then again, this difference also reflects in the costs. Where cheap product photographs can cost about 8-10 Euros (mass production though), high-end photographs can cost around 100 Euros or even 300 Euros per shot.
The philosophy about high-end photography is that you can use the same photographs for marketing campaigns. This means that the lifespan of such a photograph can be quite long, and the value of the photograph can go up incomparable to the cheap product shot.
Another difference between the photographs is also a security layer for the brand and photographer. Copyright. Whereas the product shots that are shown on a white background hardly have copyright, as it is the only goal to display the product, as there is not much creativity in the shot. This is determined by the law, an unfortunate thing for product photographs. But, if you can show that there is creativity to be found in the final shot, then we certainly speak of copyright. Pretty interesting, huh?
So, let's say... a competitor uses a product photograph, without requiring the consent of the photographer (which you paid for), and starts to get some pretty bad advertisements out there. Hmhmm. What are you going to do? Not much, as the product shot has no copyright. What would it cost you? What about high-end product photography? I think no one is stupid enough to publish and advertise stolen work from a competitor. So, there's that. Quite some differences huh? Probably worth the money as well.
Trying out Glen Moray product photography for educational purposes
This was my first attempt to try to photograph bottles. Of course, I made some mistakes with color correction, but the ones I found online are also a bit off from the original thing in my opinion. Anyway! This process is quite a lot of fun.
Building a studio for the bottle to create a clean environment
One of the things I had to do was to create a clean environment for the bottle. I made my plexiglass diffusers which had multiple uses. One was to make a box, another was to shine light through it, and another use I had for it, was to use it as a background.
Lighting and some tricks
Lighting is super important. I used a piece of paper that would illuminate the Whisky a lot better. If you compare the lighting from the above images and below, you'll see a huge difference in lighting and effect. In the above images I'm more focused on composition and how much power I would need for my lighting. I'm also looking at obvious reflections. But the fun starts when I start moving some lights.
The whole process of getting the right lighting took me about 1 hour and 30 minutes. Which is nice for a first try.
The process is delicate but worth it
You have to be pretty patient to work on this. Lol. But since this was for educational purposes, I had a lot of fun playing with a bottle of whisky, some lights, and a piece of paper.
I love the way how the Glen Moray bottle looks. It's not your standard Whisky bottle, yet it isn't too complicated like some other bottles. Now that I look back at it, it's the perfect bottle to try bottle photography out.
As you can see, the lighting on the bottle is starting to look like something that I want. I want a sophisticated edge. Not too sharp, as it would be looking a bit cheap and it doesn't complement the bottle in my opinion. Just like when you purchase whisky, you want a smooth taste (better quality whisky) instead of a sharp taste (poor quality whisky). So, why not resemble this in the actual photograph (as I have a task to display the product as best as possible anyway)? As you can see in the photographs, there is a lot of creativity that starts before the final photograph, it's mostly to be found in the way how the product is lit. But for copyright, that wouldn't be enough, it would still be a gray area, at least, back in the day it is. Perhaps it has changed over time, as product photography has evolved a lot over the last few years.
Post-processing
Post-processing is quite a pain in the ass IF you want it to be perfect. Well, I wanted it to be perfect as I wanted to learn and try out as much as possible. I went a little bit overboard with it though. For example, I removed the glass, and replaced it with see-through "glass". Of course, this isn't glass, but just some 2D graphic layers mimicking glass. LOL. It would be completely useless if the background of the final image would be white. But what... if it isn't?
Note: at the time when I made this, colored backgrounds were -not acceptable-, and I didn't care about what was accepted or not, I just wanted to make something cool!
I made this about 7 years ago. So... let's see what I could do with a 7-year-old product photograph with little to no effort. I just added two texture photographs that I also took. I didn't even edit them, besides applying a little bit of blur.
What do you think about product photography?
Besides the (missing) shadow, it looks pretty realistic, right? RIGHT? I hope I could entertain you a little bit about the difference between "high-end" and "mass-production" product photography, and how I prepare and finish my product photography.
Hope you enjoyed the shots. I saw some possibilities to do with these old photographs... kinda like the low-light edit, I shared here. I might be playing around in the future with those shots, trying to make a teaser out of it, or something else.
Cheers,
Ruben
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