Palestinian olive oil & olives

[Mike Buckley]

A very nice family my wife and I have recently come to know gave us this bottle of Palestinian olive oil. The primary challenge of making this image was to display the unusual shape of the bottle. It's smaller at the bottom than at the shoulder and it's square at the bottom but transitions to a spherical shape at the shoulder.

First capture:

• A medium continuous-light lamp handheld on the top left lit the front label.

Second capture:

• A medium continuous-light lamp with blue gel shining from the rear through a large circular diffuser around the background toward the subjects and camera added the blue highlight to the edges of the bottle.
• The background was lit from below by a small continuous-light lamp with two layers of diffusion material, which reduced the amount of light striking the surface.
• A medium handheld continuous-light lamp shining through a large diffuser on the right added a white reflection to the corner of the bottle and added light to the olives, tabletop and background, creating soft shadows cast by the olives and bottle.

Most important changes made during post-processing:

• The reflection on the corner of the bottle was changed from white to blue.
• Imperfections in the front label were repaired.

Materials:

• Background is midnight blue paper with a slight texture.
• Tabletop is black paper.

Review the image at the largest size to see the details.

[chauncey]

Great subject with nice colors on the bottle...the olives...I wouldn't have been able to identify
them. Very much like your lighting and PP work.

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks, Chauncey!

[Shadowman]

Nice composition and nicely lit.

[TonyW]

That's quite stunning. And thanks for lighting explanation.

[Mike Buckley]

Thank you to John and Tony!

[DanK]

I agree--an excellent image, and thanks for the explanation of the lighting. I've never tried such complex lighting, but someday...

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks, Dan!

such complex lighting

Actually, my initial lighting setup was even more complex. I also used a strip soft box adjoining a large diffusion panel. A blue gel was placed on the soft box's speedlight. That setup was used to add the reflection to the corner of the bottle. It creates a hard line on one side of the reflection and a gradient that fades to the other side that looks really great every other time I have used it. It didn't look good in this situation so I turned off the speedlight. Sometimes simpler setups are better and this one was a good example.

[Brownbear]

Absolutely gorgeous! So elegant with such beautiful colours... Another one of my favourites of yours.

[Manfred M]

A very nice variation on your usual theme, and it seems to work quite well too! A fine example of a low key shot.

I did have a bit of trouble identifying the olives though; perhaps a bit too subtle for me. Had you considered using a bright background instead? I wonder how that would look?

[Mike Buckley]

Thank you to Christina and Manfred!

The title of the thread includes mention of the olives because I was concerned that people wouldn't immediately recognize them as that. It's interesting to see that I was right about that. Indeed, when I took them out of the bottle, they were a lot smaller than I had remembered despite that I've been eating this exact brand of olives for years in a favorite recipe using Greek seasonings.

If I had used large green olives, my guess is that they would have been more immediately recognizable. I chose the black olives out of concern for authenticity. My very small amount of research resulted in information indicating that olives used to make olive oil have generally ripened to at least the reddish stage or farther to the black stage. The olives in the photo are mostly black with touches of red tones.

I didn't try a bright background. I chose the dark background because I have always liked the artistic flair of Arabic characters and wanted their gold lettering on the front label to pop out of the image. I felt that a bright background might compete too much with the lettering.

[Brownbear]

Just to say I love the darkness of the image because it sets off the gold lettering and the beautiful blue highlight on the bottle. I would assume they were olives simply because it is a bottle of olive oil.