Bottle of Wine

In the interests of advancing my photographic skills, I’ve decided to to explore the area of flash photography. I’ve done a little reading, asked some questions and chose to plunge in after acquiring some accessories to complement my flash unit. I’ve updated the My Photographic Equipment Page (look under Menu heading Pages) to include my flash equipment, should you be interested in knowing what I am using.

Today’s is the first post of some photographs I took recently, practicing and experimenting with flash photography. I was unable to enlist any human subjects  (understandably) so my first efforts fall in the category of Still Life. I chose to use a handy bottle of wine, some glasses, the cork, a corkscrew and an apple; things that should look enticing. Here’s the first one, photographed on our dining room table.

I  got the flash lighting the way I wanted it but wasn’t really conscious of the natural light coming through the windows behind me. As a result, I have too many reflections in the glasses and bottle. Some reflection can be interesting but too much is just clutter. A good lesson learned!

For the next picture, I moved to the kitchen countertop with the subject backlit by the natural light coming through the windows. I still have some reflections in the glasses but fewer and it’s not distracting. I wanted to capture the reflections of the glasses in the counter top and I was pleased with how that turned out.

My initial efforts have confirmed that there remains a lot to learn. That’s good, I look forward to the experience. Thanks to Andrew for his guidance on the choice of flash equipment and tips on setting it up.