How the Table Affects Lighting When Shooting Bottles
Here’s a 7-minute video in which photographer Dustin Dolby of Workphlo demonstrates how your choice of shooting table influences the resulting lighting when shooting bottles.
The table’s edge presents a barrier for placing the light. Adjusting the position of the light will alter the resulting highlight on the bottle, but they all have the flaw of not having a clean highlight where it meets the bottom of the bottle and table.
Next, Dolby uses a custom-welded rectangular shooting table that’s about the size of a textbook. For a similar solution, you can buy a baby wall plate.
While the issue at the bottom of the highlight has been suppressed a little bit, it’s still not “clean as a whistle.”
Finally, Dolby uses an even smaller circular custom-welded shooting table that fits just a single wine bottle. For a similar solution, you can also use an upside-down cup.
This table allows the highlight to extend all the way down to the bottom of the bottle. To finish the lighting with the one-light setup, you can add a reflector card on the opposite side.
Here’s the final edited photo that resulted from this shoot:
You can find more of Dolby’s Workphlo content on Facebook, https://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=http%3A%2F%2Finstagram.com%2Fworkphlo&redir_token=2BZKOn3enk8yA_dPvTWfXw1yQjl8MTU3NDk2MTkyOEAxNTc0ODc1NTI4&event=video_description&v=fxxsCCDpJs0“>Instagram, and YouTube.