Still life - Tabletop

[marlunn]

A 'bit' different for me, not too happy about the reflections in the bottle but hey, first time doing this type of thing semi-seriously. Local camera club that I am a member of has a summer assignments type thing through July to September, weekly subjects and you have to take them in the week of the subject - no trawling through the archives Then we submit them to the web page and everyone votes on them.

So, is this reasonable and not going to embarrass myself if i put it in ?

Food and Drink

[Geoff F]

Nothing wrong with that image, Mark; but nothing there that makes me go wow either.

I would say it is quite acceptable but don't expect to be a prizewinner with such a traditional composition where the bottle is central and other items equally spaced on either side.

Have you experimented with bottle on one side and other items in a different pose?

I wonder about the shadow. Slight shadow from the bowl and fork due to the lighting angle but none from bottle and glass?

But I hate doing this sort of scene and much prefer prowling about for bugs; so let's see what more experienced still life photographers have to say.

[Shadowman]

Very simple composition, works well. Noticed the difference in shadows also, first thing that struck me about the image was the lack of shadows on right side but more intense on the left.

[rpcrowe]

I think that this is a very decent image. However I don't think that it is quite contest quality.

There are two things that I noticed off the bat:

1. The perspective of the bottle looks like the upper portion is ever-so slightly wider than the lower portion. This would be caused by shooting down on the bottle and results from the same optical considerations as a building looking like it is falling backwards when shooting up at it. IMO, we are more used to seeing the tops of subjects more narrow than the bottoms since that is the way we see buildings when looking up at them

Ways to adjust this perspective:
a. Shoot with sensor exactly parallel to the bottle
b. Use a Tilt Shift (Canon talk) lens
c. Adjust the perspective in Post processing (in Photoshop EDIT> TRANSFORM > PERSPECTIVE use cursor to stretch corner of image)

2. I can live with the bit of flare on the bottle but, I seem to see your reflection in the glass of the bottle. This may be minimized by
a. wearing dark clothing or draping oneself with a dark cloth when shooting. Also, having no ambient light illuminating the shooting area.
and/or
b. shooting with a light tent that has a front panel through which the lens is inserted.

I am wondering how this image would look using a darker background and adding some light from the sides or rear which would result in edge lighting.

[Rob Ekins]

Mark,
What lighting do you have available to you?
Personally I think this might work better on a dark background, maybe loose the bowl and play with the layout of the Olives.

Food for thought

[marlunn]

Thanks all - very much appreciated.

Geoff, cheers, yep much happier chasing bugs as well, but thought I ought to give it a go and join in, the shadows are not right and as you say the layout is very old and formal, need to play more and not try to 'style' it

John, thanks, I seemed to have too much or not enough shadow with the lighting available to me - more practice and try again I think

Richard, thank you, I will work my way through that, yep the sensor was above looking down slightly, so will corect that in the next version, I did think of a darker background and work on reducing the reflection so will play with that as well.

Robbie, cheers appreciated, lighting was a single Speedlight off camera bounced off ceiling with some natural sidelight from a window and a reflector on opposite side, may well lose the bottle in ver 2 or 3 or 4

[jcuknz]

Without noting the finer points that others have seen my first reaction was "How dull and flat" both composition and lighting wise. I would try again and be a bit more adventurish without playing with the olives
Still I do not know what the other members will come up with in competition to this.

[IzzieK]

Is that a precious tablecloth you used there? I have been very hardheaded with taller --> lower arrangements in anything, so I will suggest that you put your bottle to the left side, then the glass, then pick a few olives and scatter it titter-ditter on the table with the fork. Or put one on the fork too if you want or not...it is up to you...just a suggestion...google wine bottle arrangements...or olive presentation. There are so many things you can do with loose olives arrangements on the table...get something red like small pickled round pepper to break the colours down too. We have selection of loose olives and pickled things in one of those places near the deli of the supermarket...

[Mike Buckley]

Not at all embarrassing! There are considerable attributes of your image that make it an excellent first attempt of photographing objects with very difficult photographic characteristics.

The easiest thing to do to quickly to add some interest to the scene is to make a gradient of your tabletop/background. That can be done with lighting and/or post-processing.

I disagree with everyone about the shadows being "wrong." The wine bottle produced the same shadow at its base that the bowl and fork produced -- very attractive, soft shadows too! There is no shadow produced by the glass of wine because clear glass produces no shadow and the shadow that would have been produced by the wine seems to have been eliminated by the light. I don't see that as a problem.

As for the top of the wine bottle appearing a little wider than the base, that could have been produced for the reason Richard explained but the wine bottle could also simply be wider at the top. A lot of wine bottles are made that way.

As for controlling unwanted reflections of objects not in the scene being displayed on glass objects in the scene, there are two ways to do that not involving a light tent. One way is to shoot in a large enough room that is dark enough that the objects that are not in the scene are not reflected in the glass. The other way (the method I use) is to enclose the scene in black and release the shutter from outside the black "tent" using a remote control.

As for controlling the glare on the wine bottle, the only way to do that at the time of capture is to ensure that your light source is not within the family of angles. Read up on that in Light: Science & Magic. Otherwise, eliminate it during post-processing.

[Kaye Leggett]

I'm not a good technician so won't comment on that aspect. But thinking about your composition...

Maybe have the olives in a similar style vessel to the glass
Have a fork which compliments the bottle, a silver one rather than gold
Maybe take the top off the bottle and place that in the image too
Being really picky, it looks like more than just that glass full has been poured out of the bottle
The wine is (I think Italian) so maybe research whether you have a more Italian style of glass and olive bowl

Just some ideas, ignore if not helpful.

[Loose Canon]

Hi Mark!

Nice to see some more still life stuff posted! Very cool!

So, is this reasonable and not going to embarrass myself if i put it in ?

Nah! I wouldn’t say it’s an embarrassment at all! I think it’s a classic shot and I like the simplicity. Sure you could style it up and try some different compositions and that’s just what I would do while you are in a “still life” mood. Ton of styling’s you could go for.

From a technical standpoint, however, there are a few things I would be looking at if I had shot this.

First thing I would do if re-shooting is remove the rear label from the bottle and any glue residue. The back side of the rear label through the bottle is not great. Further, it blocks light reflected into the bottle from your BG.

I adjusted your white and black points (only) in this next example. I’m seeing a lot of shots posted where this is neglected and it’s very important to get the dynamic range going on. As you can see, you get more clarity, more contrast, more “pop”, more accurate color. A good workflow will usually make sure of this adjustment and I like it right after setting my white balance. Until these two are set accurately, you cannot make accurate color decisions because the colors are off to begin with. These two easy adjustments alone can make all the difference in the world.



Lighting. One can easily see the reflections of the ceiling bounce, the window and the reflector in the bottle. Not much you can do for the light sources unless you go with different lighting/light modification and/or compositing. This would require some additional equipment. The idea would be to control and shape these sources thereby controlling the shape of the reflections. And I get it that additional equipment may not be available. It is possible, however, to eliminate or mitigate unwanted reflections in post. For example, where the neck of the bottle meets the shoulder camera left of center there is a small “spot” highlight. These kinds of reflections are an easy fix and would be better off not being there. The shadows you have are nice and ground the objects. And, as an aside, there is no doubt clear glass produces shadows when a light source is present by virtue of partial refraction and partial reflection. Even air produces shadows and can be photographed via Schlieren photography.

Reflections. This will go hand in hand with distortion. The mentioned reflections from the surroundings are difficult to control shooting reflective subjects (in this case glass). Some of the suggestions mentioned will help. But one thing that has not been mentioned is shooting at an angle that “hides” the lens/photographer/reflectors/etc. reflections in the shot. If you were to lower your camera angle such that your lens is shooting straight into the bottle label, or maybe even slightly lower that would eliminate a lot (probably not all) of this. The label won’t reflect the camera/lens. Also, shooting level will help with the distortion issue, which is definitely present.

Distortion. While it is definitely possible the bottle is of imperfect shape, the aforementioned distortion is present. The following illustration shows the glass and the bowl giving toward the outside of the frame edges. This is very difficult to fix after the fact because of the close proximity of the subject matter. Any skewing or warping in post has a good chance of affecting the other subjects because they are so close together unless you clip the subjects into layers and go from there. Better to address it as much as possible in-camera. As an aside this would be a good time to break out that large format view camera or that tilt/shift lens we all have hiding in the closet (yeah right!).



Some other assorted thoughts. My post production flow for this kind of work is very concentrated and detail oriented. It is my belief that this separates an average shot from an above average shot. As an example, I would lose the seam in the glass running vertically down the left-of-center. I would try to do something about the reflection of whatever is hanging on the wall on the opposite side of the window light reflection, the window frame is also visible, you know, stuff like that. I would also add that gradient/vignette thus giving a more “targeted” look to the subjects.

[marlunn]

Cheers J for John I know its not exactly leaping off the page, it does look a bit 2d.

Izzie, its a paper roll I got specifically for the idea of doing this so as to have a plain backdrop with no joint, not sure about scattering the olives but I like the idea of food with gusto that it pictures up so I will explore that further.

Mike, Thank you, that first sentence coming from you is very much appreciated, I shot it in late afternoon using some natural light - I will try something again at night with no 'uncontrolled' light and see how I can improve on that (see 2nd to last para)

Kaye, thanks yep going for an italian theme, the fork wood was a slight link to the olives as in Olive wood but you are right - more work on pulling the theme together would be better.

Terry, many thanks, I really appreciate the time and effort you have put into this. Instant lift on simple white and black corrections. I really do need to work on my workflow to get the basics right.

All, thank you all for your input and help on this. I am limited on time for this theme I have until till friday night to get the shot in the can! Work has a nasty habit of getting in the way, and I have to confess - the wine is no more and the olives are down to a scant few

However, this was actually a lot of fun and appeals to my control side. You really do have to control every aspect of the shot to do this well and thats miles away from my usual bug hunting shots so I think this will be something I will persevere with and refer back to this and other threads that feature this style. Again my thanks all.

[Mike Buckley]

I have to confess - the wine is no more

That's something to brag about, not to confess.

You really do have to control every aspect of the shot to do this well

See the quote displayed at the bottom of my automated signature.

[Mike Buckley]

clear glass produces no shadow

Whoa! I was completely wrong about that. I just now produced a shadow using both clear glass and clear plastic.