Reading Time

Stuck indoors while the weather rages, the landscape photographers bane, I decided to practice some more still life compositions. It’s a curious thing really, telling a bit of a story, without explicitly telling the viewer what’s going on. Here we have a book where only a handful of words are clear and visible, a bottle that is the focus of the piece. The storm rages, but it’s an excellent time to sit, relax and read a good book, or, if you’re a photographer, tell everyone you’re thinking of reading a book and having a very specific adult beverage.

This is another foray into still life photography for me, conveying a story, or idea with just a few objects. I spent a bit of time working on my composition, the lighting in the scene, and placement of specific things. This is also my working with subject isolation, using your focus to almost highlight one item, or subject. Obviously the bottle of Sexton Whiskey is the focus here, I just like this bottle, it’s elegant and makes for an excellent prop I intend to use more often in some of my photos.

The overall lighting in this scene started with a singular orange light off to the right, I then added a bounced flash off the ceiling. Finally I dropped a hard light directly overtop of the bottle. I set the lights at the same temperature, and the bounced flash was there primarily to fill in, though I got a little streaking of light on the bottle as you can see. All in all, I think this is a fairly complete and competent photo. A good place to anchor myself for future improvement of this difficult art.

Until Next Time!

Aperture: f2
ISO: 160
SS: 1/8th
Focal: 56mm

Viltrox 56mm