UPDATE: After completing the course, and with the wisdom of hindsight, I have realised that beverage photography is challenging, and it was naive of me to expect "instantly good" results. Throughout the course, the instructor remained patient and helpful.
If you've followed along the last two days, you've seen my frustrating attempts to light and photograph a wine bottle properly. On Thursday, I was able to get the outline of the bottle nearly correctly lit, but I still had more work to do on lighting. I emailed the course instructor, who suggested I move the lights back further behind the wine bottle.
I tried out his suggestion on Friday, and I got a little closer. However, I struggled to light the front of the bottle properly.
This morning, I spent almost 90 minutes in my basement trying one thing or the other. I moved one of the Speedlites from the stand and handheld it at various places around the basement with little success. The bottle was either too well lit or reflected the unfinished roof of the basement.
Just near the end of my session, I experimented with the power settings on the Speedlite, which I controlled via a setting on the Fujifilm X-T2 menu. The idea was to photograph the bottle with the Speedlites lighting the side of the bottle, then photograph the front of the bottle and blend the two images in Adobe Photoshop. The result is the image you see below.
What do you think?
Submitted as part of the 100DaysToOffload project.
Product photography is difficult without specialized equipment.
Yes, it is. It's especially frustrating I have only a few hours a night to experiment and I don't have the right equipment.
One more photo to separate the bottom of the bottle from the table and mask that into your composite.
I'm having trouble lighting the base in a way that would be consistent with the top of the bottle.
Can you imagine walking around a strange room in the dark with no flashlight? That's how this feels.
In any case, my wife wanted to drink her wine so the project had ended until she buys a new one.