Before we get carried away, let me say I’m not a huge wine drinker – so when I happen to have a glass of wine sitting on the kitchen bench top in the middle of the day, it’s with the intention of getting creative with the camera rather than getting seriously plastered!
Right – here’s my wine glass on the bench.
It’s pretty no frills – just sitting on the stainless-steel ridging beside the sink. A black piece of card behind is about as high-tech as I got.
Having said that, there were a couple of conscious decisions in the placement. The ridges in the stainless-steel looked promising in terms of being reflected and distorted in the liquid, and my rudimentary black card was there simply to provide a neutral and unobtrusive background.
Once I began the photo shoot, I quickly learned the importance of utilising the optimum vantage point and, making very deliberate decisions about what, and how much to include in the shot.
In order to fully highlight and enhance the reflections in the wine, I needed to crouch down very low, below the level of the bench, so I was looking up into the body of the glass. Being side-on, or looking down just didn’t cut it.
Here’s one of my first attempts.
I focused more on the glass’s actual stem (not the reflection), but this tends to produce a rather staid and weighty effect. All the interest is in the reflections at the top and the stem feels rather chunky and bottom-heavy in the frame.
Let’s try again… This time I removed most of the actual stem so the intriguing reflections were more prominent. Although not exactly centred in the middle of the frame, I wanted to see what the ‘whole’ reflection of the glass’s stem and base looked like.
I quite liked this, but then took a little extra time to ponder how else I could approach the subject. Wanting to see if I could make the shot more of a ‘mystery’ and not reveal all of the glass’s ‘secrets’ at once, I tried only presenting half the material.
This is the original, unaltered image of ‘Half a Glass’. I found in this instance, ‘less was more’.
The image is less ‘busy’, the lines and curves are simple, and most importantly, the viewer can become more engaged by imaging what the other half of the glass looks like.
A little colour enhancement, removal of blemishes and cropping at the top of the image to help draw the viewer’s eye down to the main body of the shot, were the final polishing touches.
I must confess, I did, at one point, mull over the possibility of presenting the image upside down, adding an extra baffling element when it comes to deciphering the shot.
But at the end of the day, I finally decided my wine glass would remain upright, and embody within it, the many wonderous fancies one might conjure up if one had imbibed too much!!