How to Photograph White Wine on a Perfectly White Background

White wine in product photography can be easily made to glow and give a beautiful color and gradient through the glass. In this 9-minute tutorial, Dustin Dolby of workphlo shows a great way to achieve this with a simple setup.

Here’s Dolby’s description of the video tutorial:

When considering how to photograph products on a white background, there are a few lighting tips we can keep in mind. A bright gradated background will refract beautiful light into our wine bottles giving them a sense of volume. By capturing a high-contrast backlit frame we also make it possible to cut out the wine in photoshop, negating the need to get #ffffff white backgrounds straight out of camera.

Because the wine bottle is transparent, you’re able to light it from the back. But if you directly flash the bottle with a strip box from behind, you’ll get a not so nice effect with horrible contrast and no “softness.”

However, by adding a large diffusion panel you can totally change the effect. This brings out much more of a “symmetrical” look, but don’t forget to increase your flash’s power having added the diffuser.

Dolby then moves the strip box to more of a side-angle behind the diffusion panel, before adding a second strip box to face directly at the side of the bottle.

A reflector from the right brings detail out into the label and cap of the bottle, but if it’s too strong an effect you can composite and blend a shot with and without the reflector.

Dolby suggests creating a base frame, a reflection frame, and 2 reflector frames. Once in post-production, these can all be composited together to create the final shot.