The Impostor - Behind the Scenes

[yelvertoft]

I thought I’d put together an article about how my recent still life “The Impostor” was put together. Having just re-read it before hitting the submit button, I realise it’s more to do with the thought process and the mechanics of it all rather than any specific photographic techniques, but hey, someone might get something from it.

The thought process was triggered by Foxy’s (Canis Vulpes) "Glenmorangie Tasting Glass", and in particular, Foxy’s original description that it had been inspired by a photo of some product packaging. It reminded me of a similar product packaging shot I’d seen of a row of four wine glasses (shot along the line, just off-axis). I’d thought at the time I’d seen it just how great it looked and thought I’d like to have a go at something similar sometime. I’d originally thought of a row of glasses, full of red wine, shot along the line of stems with a close crop to only just include the bottoms of the bowls, lit from the side as per the Foxy pic, and with a similar black background, ‘On Parade’ was a mental working title.

The first hurdle I came across was of a highly practical nature, we didn’t have four identical wine glasses. Plenty of sets of three, but no sets of four. I’m sure the Yelvertoft household is not alone in this dilemma. I tried framing up some groups of three with an ‘odd’ fourth glass in the line but even just a casual experiment in composition showed that it wasn’t really going to work. Short of buying another set of wine glasses, I’d been looking at how to get a shot with the odd glass and thinking along the lines of a theme of ‘Odd Man Out’. Whilst mentally wrestling with a few ideas one evening (or staring blankly into space as Mrs Y would have it), Debbi handed me a glass of white wine; it had been freshly poured from a well chilled bottle. I sat and watched vaguely mesmerised as the chill slowly formed condensation. I thought, “That glass has just broken out in a cold sweat”.

Jigsaw pieces started dropping into place, On Parade, Odd Man Out, breaking out in a sweat, [ticking of cogs going round in Duncan’s brain…………], how about staging an identity parade. Apart from anything else, the lighting would be far easier than the original plan.

All the ideas bounced around in my head thus far called for a black background. Previously I’d borrowed a pair of Debbi’s black trousers for such tasks but a quick frame up and reflection check had shown that I needed something substantially bigger for a row of four glasses. A 2m length of black fabric (by 1.6m wide) was bought from the local sewing/haberdashery shop. When I told the assistant what I wanted the black cloth for she wasn’t at all surprised, indeed, when I looked at one fabric she dismissed it as no good as it wouldn’t be opaque enough and would let light through. Either she was a photographer herself, or this was not an unusual request. I ended up with a fabric which was matt on one side with a slight satin sheen on the other. I guess it’s the kind of stuff you’d probably make the lining of a suit jacket from.

Having previously tried still-life arrangements of cheese and wine, I knew how much light a red wine can blank off, from even the most powerful flashgun with no bleed through whatsoever. A bottle of a fairly light Californian rosé wine was bought, not normally the kind of stuff either Mrs Y or I drink, but needs must. You’d never know it was a very pale pink from the end photo. This is the first time I’ve ever bought a bottle of wine purely for it’s photographic qualities. It went down ok afterwards, but I won’t rush to buy another.

The fabric was laid out on the dining table, matt side up, the backdrop pulled up with the use of a couple of suitable cardboard boxes and the glasses arranged in a line. Knowing how glaringly glassware shows fingerprints in a photo, the glasses were cleaned with a (brand new) micro-fibre cloth, which promptly shed bits of pale blue fluff onto the black cloth. Not surprisingly, these stood out, …………quite a bit. Once this had been sorted, and the basic arrangement put in its place, the camera was set to aperture priority mode and the aperture and point of focus adjusted to give a depth of field that covered the front edge of the first wine glass to the back edge of the rear glass, and no more. As it is, the focus has started to trail off on both the very front and back edges of the first and last glasses but stopping down the aperture one click more put the background too close to being in focus for my liking. With hindsight, I could have stopped down the aperture and moved the point of focus forwards a bit as there is only darkness at the front of the shot which wouldn’t have shown as being in focus.

The set of three glasses were filled with the (room temperature, no condensation wanted) rosé wine. The flashgun was setup to give the narrowest beam of flash possible (covering a spread of 105mm FL if used on-camera) as I wanted to give the lighting a harsh, authoritarian, secret-police compound feel. The harsh lighting produced the backlighting required, but also threw into relief the slightest crease in the cloth. These were smoothed out as best they could be and the decision taken to remove any further blips in PP if they proved distracting. As ever when photographing glassware with flash, stray reflections abounded. The whole setup had to be moved into the centre of the cloth to create more surrounding ‘black flag’; this was needed to control reflections of the uncovered section of dining table and even the dining room floor being shown in the bowls and stems of the glasses. Once moved and recomposed accordingly, final tweaks were given to the position and angle of the flash and adjustments made to see if applying a degree of flash compensation improved things, I left the flash set to zero compensation in the end. Flash mode used was P-TTL with the on-camera pop-up being used as a wireless controller only – i.e. the flash was not contributing light to the image. Exactly the same result could have been achieved using a full multi-contact wired connection (and auto mode) or even a simple single-contact wired and fully manual mode on the flash if there are sufficient manual power adjustment steps on the flash.

The final step was to pour the chilled wine into the ‘odd’ glass. Having previously seen the way the condensation formed, I knew that I would have to work fast to capture the ever-changing texture on the chilled glass. A bit of chimping showed an unexpected problem, a stray reflection had appeared in the stem of the 2nd (and to a lesser extent 3rd) glass. I could understand the appearance of the yellow patch in the 4th stem, but it took a long while to figure out that the reflections in the first two stems were also from the white wine and associated condensation forming; they were reflections from the stems doing a good fish-eye lens impersonation. This could not be controlled without completely changing the setup, I decided to live with it and PP it out if it proved too distracting in the final image.

In the end, post processing was limited to warming up the white balance to give the white wine a more appealing straw colour, minor cropping to remove the difference between viewfinder coverage (95%) and actual image framing - I could see the top surface of the white wine in the actual image, adding a bit of sharpening to optimise the texture of the condensation, resize for upload and post.

Image showing setup arrangement shown below.

I think this picture is a good example of why “freestyle” months are needed in the competition. I can’t imagine any of the themes I was trying to explore fitting a likely (specified) competition theme. A freestyle month allowed me to develop my own ideas to fit the competition.

Regards,

Duncan

[Canis Vulpes]

Great behind the scenes, Duncan.

I did not realise I had been a source of inspiration.

[mw_aurora]

Nice behind the scenes Duncan - its good to read about the thought process too!

[sassan]

Duncan; First, I haven't read anything here yet. Not only I think you have a point but am sure this is an interesting writing, after all it is written by you. Unfortunately its late and have to wake up early tomorrow for anther gorgeous Monday morning. So will be back soon.

[Don Hoey]

Excellent behind the scenes to compliment a super image Duncan.

Totally agree with your thoughts on an occasional ' Freestyle ' month in the comp.

Don