Classic Cocktails Photographed in the Style of Master Painters

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Photographer Greg Stroube of the Bruton Stroube studio recently had a little bit of fun photographing cocktails. The still life series, called Classic Cocktails, imagines how the great master painters of the past might have painted the classic cocktails of today.

Stroube chose four cocktails to photograph: the Bloody Mary, Lime Rickey, Bellini, and Sangria, each of them captured and processed in the style of Golden Age painters like Vermeer.

“A Bloody Mary just seems more fun with over-the-top garnishes—vegetables and herbs billowing out like a bouquet of flowers. That’s how the idea for Classical Cocktails began,” explains Stroube. “How would an Old Master style a Sangria, how would Vermeer paint a Lime Ricky?”

It turns out, this is how:

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Each of the four compositions was captured in a range of exposures, because a single photograph just can’t capture what the old masters were painting.

“I photographed for each value of light so that as we layered the images, we could pull out the highlights and push in the shadows in order to achieve that rich Chiaroscuro brilliance you see in a Golden Age painting,” explains Stroube.

Once he was done with the photography, the retouching team at Bruton Stroube took over to make these look as authentically painterly as possible… right down to the insects.

“Digital Artist Jordan Gaunce reminded me that many Old Master painters would tuck in little personal details,” writes Stroube, “which motivated the bee in the Sangria shot and the dragonfly near the Lime Rickey.”

Check out some of the detail shots below:

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To see more of Greg’s work, head over to the Bruton Stroube website. Or if you’re in the mood for a laugh, check out some of the funnier stand-in test shots the studio has captured in the “Test Shot Tuesday” series we featured.


Image credits: All photographs by Greg Stroube/Bruton Stroube Studio and used with permission.

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