Bottled up
"Oooh! That gin looks interesting," I say as we wander around the shop. "I would really like to photograph that bottle. It looks like a challenge!" It is a bottle of Skully Gin, Oriental Citrus.
The bottle is crystal clear, the liquid is crystal clear. The ingredients of the gin are printed directly on the bottle, and visible from the front of the bottle.
Here's the bottle. Unedited. Unstyled. Flat lighting.
As I tried out different lighting and backgrounds, one of the things I was concerned about was whether or not the back silkscreen print should be visible to some extent when the bottle is viewed from the front. An unscientific poll of photographer friends proved to be inconclusive. The general consensus was that the client (had there been one) would decide.
Ok, I'm the client...I decide: the print on the back should not be visible. But, I cannot (don't want to) remove the print. So, I will remove it in post. This will be a high end product retouching! And, man, I got some well-need practice with the Pen Tool.
First I wanted drama! The skull needs drama! And a dark background with colors that are complementary to the yellow label.
So, that was dark and dramatic. Now I switched up the background, adjusted the lighting added a prop and went for a "refreshing" shot.
Finally, I got this idea, that I wanted to "merge" that cool skull logo onto a citrus fruit, because the gin is "Oriental Citrus". I finally found a reason to use a Displacement Map!
Here are the two images that I merged:
Now that I have had my fun, I really want to taste the contents!!