Before Nightcap

No still life practice would be complete without photographing glassware. It is always a good idea to photograph glassware with backlighting. Using this method reveals the finest details of the glass and also shows its beautiful shape.

From a commercial point of view, this is also a useful part of exploring still life photography. Whenever a manufacturer launches a new product, glassware or bottles are often used for packaging, such as soft drinks, liquor, and perfume. Mastering the skill of still life photography can help a great deal when photographing merchandise.

For this piece, again, I used natural light. The light source came from the window in my studio.

The background was created by covering the window with a large plastic bag. The light was nicely diffused. A polarizing filter was used to reduce reflections and glare. To give the composition a cool feeling, I applied an 80A filter.

“It only existed in the mind, pre-visualizing, so to speak.”

I chose f/5.6 to get just enough depth of field (DOF) for the glass while blurring the bottle in the background.

Please bear in mind that this was shot with the Canon EOS-1V, an analogue camera with no LCD preview. In fact, there was no LCD, just the viewfinder. There was no preview whatsoever. It only existed in the mind, pre-visualizing, so to speak.

I was rather happy with the result when I examined the prints.