Wine: Chardonnay-Peach Shlush

[Mike Buckley]

Though I'm thrilled to immensely enjoy wine, I'm not a purist; I enjoy wine in any form including a great sangria or the fabulous wine slush displayed in this photo.

I bought this delicious chardonnay-peach slush at a winery that is only a year or so old in the tiny town of Logan, Ohio. The slush is actually far better than any of their regular wines and is so good that I bought two bottles of it. By dumb luck, we didn't drink the last glass of it when we took it on a summer weekend to our friends' lake house. That's a good thing because I had one heck of a good time making this photo. Better yet, the slush is still available to drink.

Setup
The tabletop and background are a gradient printed on a single sheet of vinyl. The vinyl is covered on the tabletop by a piece of clear acrylic to protect the vinyl from moisture. The horizon line created by the acrylic sheet was quickly eliminated during post-processing. A medium continuous-light lamp was positioned on the left and above the scene. A small continuous-light lamp on the right side was used mostly to balance the brightness of the right and left sides of the background. That lamp was also flagged somewhat to prevent too much light from spilling onto the tabletop. A polarizer filter controlled the specular highlights on the strawberries.

Unlike when making my previous photo using imitation condensation, all of the condensation displayed in the photo shown below was created naturally by placing ice cold slush in a glass stored at room temperature and then allowing the drink to sit a few minutes in my makeshift studio.

Please click the photo to display the details at a larger size.

[ST1]

Nicely done as always Mike . Do you print your own vinyl gradients or are they purchased


Peter

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk.

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured.

[bnnrcn]

Great and very inviting

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks, everyone!

Do you print your own vinyl gradients or are they purchased?

About two years ago when Calumet closed all of its American stores by declaring bankruptcy there, I bought five gradients at a liquidation price probably about 75% off the regular price. I think I used one of them one time soon after. I hadn't used any of them since then until very coincidentally I used two different gradients in the last three days. I still have never used three of the gradients. Like many items in my makeshift studio, when I use something even only on a very rare occasion, I'm really glad to have it and these gradients are a great example of that.

Calumet's stores still operating in Europe and perhaps elsewhere may still carry them. If so, they are officially branded as "Calumet Graduated PVC Backgrounds." They are manufactured in two sizes, 31" x 43" (80 x 110 cm) and 43" x 67" (110 x 170 cm). All of mine are the smaller size.