Wine celebrating the Olympics

[Mike Buckley]

I would definitely like to claim the concept of this photo as my own. However, it's not. My wife sent me an image very similar to it that came across her computer a few days ago, so I decided to make one for myself.

How wine was added to the scene
I placed some red wine (any red wine will do) in a plastic cup that is a little larger than the bottom of a wine bottle. Ironically, I dipped the bottom of a bottle containing white wine into the red wine. I chose that particular bottle partly because its base was larger than the other bottles but mostly because of the interesting pattern on the bottom of the bottle. I then blotted the bottom of the wine bottle slightly before making the imprint. Without the blotting, too much wine would be applied to the scene, which would result in a mess. I used that routine of dipping, blotting and imprinting to make each ring.

The extraneous drops were added by dipping a wine cork in the wine and then dripping the wine onto the paper. This time I used a cork from a bottle of red wine but only because it happened to have been handy.

Setup
The wine is applied to a sheet of white background paper. The paper is taped to a piece of foam core and the foam core is placed on an easel. Two small continuous-light lamps are positioned at each side of the scene at a 45-degree angle to the paper. This was done to create relatively even lighting, not because there was any need to eliminate direct reflections. There were no direct reflections because the paper produced mostly diffuse reflections.

[Donald]

Now, that's clever.