Ingleside Vineyards, a Virginia winery, asked us to shoot 16 bottles of wine for their website.
Since the bottles are glass, you are going to see reflections of the lights no matter what you do. So the idea is to create reflections that are attractive and show the shape of the bottle.
Here I have a large soft light box on the right to create the highlight down the front of the bottle. A large white reflector is to the left of the bottle and positioned far enough away so it's barely visible on the glass.
Everything around the bottle has to be black or you will see stray reflections. The white background is about 10 feet behind the bottle so it won't affect the lighting on the bottle.
The bottles are supported high above the black table surface to avoid unwanted reflections.
I wanted a good glow to come through the bottle, but when the back light is increased in brightness, it creates a white fuzzy edge around the bottle. So we shot two different exposures, changing the lighting for each. One of those exposures was just the glow coming through the bottle. In the other shot, the front of the bottle looks perfect. The two images were then combined in Photoshop to create the final.
Here you can see how the reflection of the light shapes the bottles.
