Wine: Chateau St. Michelle "Eroica" Riesling

[Mike Buckley]

It might help your viewing experience if you would please play Beethoven's Symphony #3 in the background. That's because he named that symphony "Eroica" and this wine is named after that symphony.

The wine is a joint venture of Washington's Chateau Ste. Michelle and Ernst Loosen, a highly regarded winemaker from Mosel, Germany. (Beethoven was also German.) The wine is made entirely from Riesling grapes and is consistently top-drawer. Though some people consider it slightly sweet, I think it's dry but very fruity. It's that very fruity characteristic that in my mind sometimes misleads people to think it is a little sweet.

Setup
First capture: The tabletop is silver-grey, semi-glossy presentation board and the background is white translucent acrylic. A medium continuous-light lamp behind the background shining toward it and the subject creates the wine's glow and outlines the bottle in dark tones. A small continuous-light lamp high on the left directly lights the left side of the foil and indirectly lights its right side by bouncing light off a white reflector made of translucent vellum on that side. A strip soft box also on the right fitted with a flash unit and positioned at an angle to the reflector adds the small, gradient reflection to the right side of the bottle.

Second capture: The background, a second sheet of the same silver-grey presentation paper, is lit from below by a small continuous-light lamp fitted with a diffusion sock.

Third capture: The label is lit from above by a small continuous-light lamp.

The three captures were merged.

[rpcrowe]

Nicely displayed and captured Mike!

We were just given a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon that has only NICHOLS 2014 on the very plain front label. On the reverse, it has Cabernet Sauvignon, Stags Leap District - Napa Valley.

Image from the winery...



Have you heard of this one??? I am not familiar with various types and labels of wine...

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks, Richard!

I haven't heard of your wine. Considering that there are thousands of wineries in the world and hundreds in Napa Valley, my ignorance about that doesn't mean the winery isn't important or that the winery isn't good.

"Nichols" probably is the name of the winery. "Stags Leap" is a famous, regulated wine region. There are two wineries -- "Stag's Leap" and "Stags' Leap" -- from that district. The first one is very famous in the history of putting Napa Valley on the international wine map and the other one unfortunately used a similar name apparently to draw on the fame of the other winery. There are also lots of other wineries and vineyards in that district.

[LePetomane]

Beethoven's Third Symphony is one of my favorites, the other being the Sixth (Pastoral). Mike describes the wine as I would describe the symphony the last time I heard it.

[Mike Buckley]

Beethoven's Third Symphony is onfe of my favorites, the other being the Sixth (Pastoral). Mike describes the wine as I would describe the symphony the last time I heard it.

Interesting, Paul. I have no idea why the wine is named after the third symphony. Of all of Beethoven's nine symphonies, I would think of the sixth symphony as the most emblematic of this wine. Perhaps after that one, the second symphony.

[Shadowman]

Nicely composed, only comment is that there is a smudge look near the separation on viewer's right.

[Dave A]

Mike you are the Wizard Of Light. To me your style are all about light and shadows and strict control of these. Wonderful image.

Dave

[Mike Buckley]

Thank you to Dave and John!

John: Thanks for pointing out the detail on the right side. When viewed at 100%, it looks really odd. Fortunately, easy to fix.

[bnnrcn]

Another show of light! Nice colors and shadows. The yellow reflection on the tabletop adds a lot to the image. The bottle itself also looks very elegant. Thanks for sharing Mike

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks, Binnur!

The yellow reflection on the tabletop adds a lot to the image.

I really like the style of the blurred reflection and have made a mental note to try to find more tabletop materials that will produce that kind of reflection. I've read that spraying a tabletop that produces an exact reflection with a fine mist will produce a similar result but I've never tried it.

[JBW]

Gorgeous, simply gorgeous. Question: is merged the same as stacked?

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks, Brian!

You asked if merged is the same as stacked.

The latter term is used, to my experience, in the context of focus stacking. That's when multiple captures are made of the same scene using a different focus point in each capture and when then using focus-stacking software to automatically combine them. The purpose of doing all that is to make a final image that has a far greater depth of field than can be achieved using just one capture. Indeed, if enough captures are made and then stacked, the entire scene can be in focus when otherwise that would be impossible.

I use the term, merge, to indicate manually combining parts of multiple captures of different scenes to make a composite. Using the example of the image displayed in the first post of the thread, the background in the second capture was merged with the first capture to replace its background. This resulted in a composite file containing two layers. The label in the third capture was then merged with the composite file to replace its label. This resulted in a composite file containing three layers.

In the context of tabletop photography, there can be several reasons to merge parts of multiple captures rather than making the image using just one capture. The photographer may not have enough lighting equipment to produce a particular image using just one capture. The photographer may determine that producing the image using just one capture may take more time and/or may be less enjoyable than merging multiple captures during post-processing. The photographer may also determine that once multiple captures are made, he or she has more flexibility when constructing the final composite image because of so many captures to choose from.

If it would be helpful to see the three image files that were merged to make the final composite, I'll be happy to post them.

[Wavelength]

Superb

[Mike Buckley]

Thank you, Nandakumar!

[Mike Buckley]

Another photo of this wine is displayed in this thread.

[Mike Buckley]

Brian asked me in another thread to provide a further explanation of how I merged three captures to make the final image. The merging was done in Photoshop CC 2017, though I first began using this technique as long ago as the very first version of Photoshop Elements.

Photo #1 was set up to light the the glass portion of the wine bottle, the foil and the tabletop. Photo #2 was set up to light the background, which is not the same material used in Photo #1.

(It doesn't matter that in Photo #1 the frame of my background panel and the diffusion sock attached to the lamp on the left side are included in the scene; it only matters that the lighting of the glass portion of the wine bottle and the foil works well. I won't bore you with an explanation about Photo #2 and why its top left corner is so bright and why the left side of the frame extends beyond the background other than to mention that it was impractical to do anything about it due to the constraints of my tiny makeshift studio.)

I displayed both photos at the same time in Photoshop, selected the background in Photo #2 and moved it to Photo #1.

Photo #1



Photo #2


At that point, the label was the only part of the scene displayed in the revised version of Photo #1 that was not lit well enough. That problem was solved because I had captured Photo #3 to properly light the wine label. Once Photo #3 was also displayed in Photoshop alongside the revised version of Photo #1, I selected the label in Photo #3 and moved it to Photo #1.


Photo #3



Having moved parts of Photos #2 and #3 to Photo #1, all parts of the composition in the revised version of Photo #1 were now lit well enough that only the final tidying up was needed during post-processing. That mostly included blurring the horizon line, darkening the top left corner to complement the top right corner, and making a slight crop. The crop centered the bottle in the image and eliminated the extraneous information on the far left side of the frame that was beyond the background material.

[JBW]

There should be a way to do this in Gimp. I'm going to work on this. Thanks