Louis Latour wine: Take 2

[Mike Buckley]

I have absolutely no shame. I stole the fundamental composition of a close-up of the foil, cork and corkscrew positioned on a diagonal from a full-page advertisement of Cavit wine on the inside of the rear cover of Wine Enthusiast magazine.

"Take 1" of this wine and an explanation of why I photographed it can be seen here. "Take 2" shown below is the same wine but a different bottle because the foil is better suited for making the photo and because I needed to use an opened bottle.

Setup
The background is semi-glossy gold poster board in a slight concave shape. A small continuous-light lamp with a diffusion sock to the left and above the camera lights the subject and the upper half of the background. A medium continuous-light lamp with almost all of the front of the reflector blocked is behind, to the left and below the camera. It lights the bottom half of the background. A reflector on the right side of the bottle throws some light into the shadow of the foil and adds a reflection to the neck and lip of the bottle. The camera, not the wine bottle, is tilted. EDIT: I made a second shot to correct an issue in part of the cork screw that was nagging me. A small part of the second photo was merged with the first photo.

[Donald]

I have absolutely no shame. I stole the fundamental composition of a close-up of the foil, cork and corkscrew positioned on a diagonal from a full-page advertisement ...

And executed it as well as any commercial shot that you might see appearing in a magazine

[Mike Buckley]

And executed it as well as any commercial shot that you might see appearing in a magazine

Nah, there's a nagging flaw that I'm just itching to fix.

[Shadowman]

Be careful keeping that shot in your inventory, over time you might forget where you saw the composition. Nicely exposed.

[Mike Buckley]

over time you might forget where you saw the composition.

I recorded that information in the file's metadata...mostly as a reminder of where to look to steal more compositions.

[Marie Hass]

I love this, Mike, and the light is lovely, but the only niggling thing I could possibly think of that you might want to fix is to use a more glitzy corkscrew!

LOL's!

Marie

[Mike Buckley]

you might want to fix is to use a more glitzy corkscrew!

The advertisement included a shiny metal corkscrew. I had this corkscrew lying around the house and like the glossy black surface. However, I always use a battery-powered corkscrew these days that wouldn't look as good in this type of scene.

[bnnrcn]

Hi Mike. I like everything in the image

[Marie Hass]

Please understand that I know we often make do with what we have on hand.

What I saw was the moulded plastic lines in sides of the handles. I felt it was a bit incongruous with such an elegant wine and delightful picture.

marie

[Mike Buckley]

I fixed the flaw that was irritating me and replaced the original photo with the fixed one.

Thanks, Binnur! Glad you like it!

Marie,

For me it's more than a matter of making do with whatever we have on hand. I have a philosophy about making photos, especially photos of wine and it's just my own philosophy that others might not share, is that I want my photos to reflect the ambiance of a real-world drinking experience. As an example, that experience of using a bright, shiny, metal corkscrew with no flaws might never happen. Even if it does happen, it will only happen once because surely the corkscrew will become marred at least by its second use.

As another example, the corkscrew that was used in the advertisement was shown in a way of being used that would rarely if ever happen. I literally can't imagine how to use a cork screw in the way depicted in that ad. It made perhaps (perhaps not) a better photo but it didn't come close to reflecting the reality of removing a cork from a bottle of wine.

In this case, I used a black plastic corkscrew mostly because it fits within that philosophy. Even in my photo, the corkscrew is shown being used in a manner that probably would not happen. Even so, it's being shown quite close to how it would actually be used, unlike the photo in the ad that I saw.

Notice also that the cork has two cracks in it. That's consistent with real-world ambiance. No advertisement would ever include a cracked cork.

Again, it's just my philosophy and I appreciate that a lot of people would never adopt it.

[Brownbear]

A beautiful image, as always... Thank you for sharing your philosophy. I like the dark corkscrew because it keeps the attention on the beautifully lit cork and wine bottle.

[Chri5]

Its a very nice image. Very pleasing and easy on the eye

[John 2]

As always, expertly done. I particularly admire the gradated background which is a nice finishing touch.

[Mike Buckley]

Continued thanks to everyone!

Special thanks to John for mentioning the background. I spent about ten times more time lighting the background than the subject. I did lots of experimenting before settling on the final appearance of the background.

[Mike Buckley]

This image is almost exactly the same image used in the magazine advertisement that has the compositional elements that I stole. The image in the magazine has one significant change that is an improvement in my mind. The change was probably made digitally.

[Rebel]

Its a great shot Mike

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks, Matt!

[Dave Humphries]

First let me say these two threads are an example of the excellence of your work Mike.

I did wonder how many corks you pulled to get the text on the neck foil and the cork to be coincident in the shot?
Then I wondered whether the clue was in the cracked cork?

Cheers, Dave

[Mike Buckley]

Thank you, Dave!

I did wonder how many corks you pulled to get the text on the neck foil and the cork to be coincident in the shot?Then I wondered whether the clue was in the cracked cork?

I'm not sure whether you are being facetious or serious about finding text on the foil and cork to be coincident. So, I'll err on the side of being serious and explain how that came to be.

Regarding the foil: The name, Louis Latour, is actually printed on each foil in three places. The first trick is finding the name printed where other information I imagine to be similar to a serial number is not printed. The second trick is also finding the name printed where it hasn't been distorted in the process of applying the foil to the bottle (at least I think that's why printing on foil is sometimes distorted).

Regarding the cork: I have been saving corks lately in anticipation of a future photo, not this photo. This photo concept came up unexpectedly thanks to the advertisement in the magazine. So, I looked through my meager selection of saved corks (it's meager compared to the corks totaling at least 1000 that I already gave to my creative, talented sister-in-law) and found about six that matched this particular wine. Some of the corks were already cracked in places that were crucial enough that I ruled them out. I chose this particular cork because it wasn't cracked, hoping that if it did crack it wouldn't happen in a crucial place. Somewhere along the process of reinserting the corkscrew into the cork and reinserting the cork into the wine bottle, I cracked the cork in two places. Fortunately, both cracks are in places that are acceptable to me.

Such is the life of a guy who likes photographing wine as much as drinking it. I was eternally grateful to be able to reinsert the proper end of the cork into the bottle, as that's so often not possible for me to do.