Project 52: Week 15, Wine label and dark field illumination

[billtils]

This photograph of the label of Xanadu Cane cut Viognier was shot using dark field illumination - more on this below, but first of all, the wine .

Cane cut and the similar Cordon cut are techniques used to produce a dessert wine without the overtones that come with botrytus infection. A cane cut is made by severing the cane, and cordon by severing a "cordon" or one of the main growing arms on a vine. The cuts are made when the fruit is well-formed. This results in the grapes becoming partially desiccated and therefore sweeter, as the detached vine absorbs water from the bunches in order to sustain itself.

I was reminded how well the method produces a sweet but clean-tasting wine when we lunched at Xanadu winery in our recent trip to Western Australia. Of course some came home too.







I posted some "glass" images here about a year ago, with subjects ranging from empty glasses to some rather nice malt. These were shot either with available light or as table top studio shots using bright field illumination. Neither of these lighting approaches worked with the Xanadu label, so I tried dark field as described in "Light Science and Magic", and as recommended to me by Mike Buckley, with the result shown here. There are opportunities for improvement, but for a first anywhere near acceptable effort (yes, there are some in the trash folder) I'm happy enough to explore the technique some more.

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured.

[Manfred M]

Nice effort Bill. You've set up an nice shot where you balance the colour and brightness of the label with the colour and reflections off the bottle. For your next shot, you should look at ways of killing most of the reflections on the bottle.

Both dark field and light field setups are primarily meant for shooting clear glass, as it is transparent and the only way we can see the edges is by reflecting either white or black along those edges. It is less of an issue with a dark wine bottle as this issue does not crop up when the glass has a dark colour; but of course there is no reason one can't use that technique.

[billtils]

Thanks Manfred.

As it happens, I left the reflections in because I liked the colours and also felt they added to the sense of depth.

Yes, I am aware that the main application of the techniques is to obtain edge definition of clear glass. However, the objective here was to obtain an image that did some justice to the really attractive textured label, and neither of my other efforts (natural light - light cloud and daylight - or bright field table top came close. This is probably one that fits your "but of course there is no reason one can't use that technique".